› added 11 years ago

97

TIL, The British National Grid have to prepare for power surges due to so many people switching on kettles during advertisement breaks of popular shows.

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5LdD TIL the founder of ValueJet, whose company was shut down over fatal accidents, is now the CEO of Allegiant Air.
mKEY TIL when a script instructed Leonard Nimoy’s character, Spock, to punch someone, Nimoy felt punching was too undignified for a Vulcan and invented a way for Vulcans to render their opponents unconscious by pinching them. From that moment on, the Vulcan Nerve Pinch was born.
ZpGZB TIL about the speed-duration relationship across the animal kingdom. According to Dr. Mark Burnley's research, humans rank as fairly average competitors overall. For middle-distance, the gold goes to the painted ghost crab, while lizards dominate in ultimate endurance.
WbN4 TIL that the body of Leon Czolgosz, Assassin of President McKinley, was dissolved with acid after his execution
VM6D8 TIL that between 1921 - 1976, Sweden sterilized up to 63,000 people. Teenagers as young as 15 were sterilized for inadequacies as trivial as shortsightedness or because they allegedly lacked judgment or had "no obvious concept of ethics".