› added 11 years ago

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TIL that the city of Bogotá, Columbia employed 420 mimes to poke fun at pedestrians and drivers who didn’t follow the rules. As a result, traffic fatalities dropped by more than half, from an average of around to 1300 to about 600.

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dPbr TIL that Joseph Weizenbaum, one of the founding fathers of Artificial Intelligence, later became one of it’s leading critics when he found his secretary getting very emotionally involved with ELIZA, a chatbot that he himself programmed.
mxywE TIL that there is a spider called the Darwin's bark spider whos web is 10x stronger than kevlar. it is the toughest biological material ever studied..
lYBK TIL On D-Day General Eisenhower kept a statement in his pocket, never used, to be read out in case the Normandy landings failed.
7rMEZ TIL "Sin Eaters" were people who consumed food off the dead in order to take on the sins of a deceased person.
kJxK5 TIL before becoming Queen of the Hawaiian Kingdom, Liliʻuokalani, was inspired to write "Aloha 'Oe" ("Farewell to Thee") by a notable farewell embrace she witnessed when her party was leaving the Boyd ranch between Colonel James Harbottle Boyd & either her sister or a young lady at the ranch.