› added 2 years ago

79

TIL in 2008 the US Border Patrol spent $8.4 Million to sponsor a Nascar driver to boost agency recruitment.

Read more washingtontimes.com

via reddit.com

4Lgo TIL the 4th richest man in the world(Warren Buffett) still lives in the house he bought for $31,500 in 1958.
PKdn TIL when Columbian drug lord Pablo Escolar’s home was raided, the military released the dangerous hippos of his personal zoo, not knowing what to do with them. They now thrive in the Columbian rivers. This makes Columbia have the largest wild hippo population outside of Africa.
OoGOX The sky appears blue for a combination of two reasons. Before white light reaches the Earth's surface, the light waves collide with and bounce off of the nitrogen and oxygen atoms in the atmosphere. Different frequencies of light (in other words different colours) are scattered differently. Higher frequencies (blue and purple) are more easily scattered and thus bounce around in all different directions more than lower frequencies (red or orange) do. The scattering of high frequencies alone would cause the sky to appear blue and purple, but our eyes work better at frequencies near the middle of the spectrum (yellow and green). Since the colour blue is closer to yellow or green than purple is, the sky we see appears blue.
na8G TIL that in the 1960s Nintendo manufactured a toy called Ultra Hand. made of criss-crossed plastic elements that enabled its user to pick up objects. It was very successful and helped save Nintendo from serious financial difficulties. Its inventor went on to create the Game Boy.
0wNpN TIL Silicone oil leaches out of remote control buttons and gradually makes the controller less responsive