› added 6 years ago

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TIL that young chimpanzees outperformed college students, in both in speed and accuracy, at a working memory task involving numbers. This suggest that chimps have a photographic memory, which allows them to memorize a complex scene or pattern at a glance.

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via reddit.com

pLvA TIL Pentagon freaked out in the 1980s when they realized Finland had, against their expectations, managed to build two Mir submarines capable of diving to 6000 meters. They went on to shut down the whole Finnish submarine industry by privately threatening the country with heavy sanctions.
X0E06 TIL that at a Guns N’ Roses concert on July 2, 1991, during the band’s performance of Rocket Queen, Axl Rose dived into the audience and tackled a fan who was taking photos of the concert. Axl would proceed to smash the microphone, forcing GNR to leave, which would incite a 3-hour riot.
yrwV TIL that a 2013 study revealed that viewers begin to abandon a streaming video if it fails to load within two seconds. Each additional second of delay results in a 5.8% increase in the abandonment rate
YmJG TIL that Canada had a top secret list of suspected Communists they intended to detain indefinitely. If they tried to escape, they would be shot… one of the people on that list was Tommy Douglas - the founder of the current Healthcare and CPP programs.
Av8o TIL movies prospered without popcorn until the Great Depression, when theater owners scrambled to make up for reduced ticket prices by turning to “audible edibles.” From 1934 to 1940, the nation’s annual popcorn harvest grew from 5 million to 100 million pounds.