› added 4 weeks ago

5

TIL that in 1979, Dutch broadcaster NOS began transmitting computer programs over the radio. Listeners could record the programs on audio cassettes and use those cassettes in computers that used cassettes as data storage medium

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w5KP TIL a harpoon fragment patented in 1879 was found in a bowhead whale in 2007, indicating the whale was between 115 and 130 years old.
ZpGVv TIL that SR71A "start carts" exhausted USA's junkyards of 400 cubic inch Buick V8 engines
jNoAQ TIL that Aldous Huxley's descriptions of the effects of alcohol on fetuses in Brave New World predate the scientific recognition of Fetal Alcohol Syndrome by more than four decades.
4XkEa TIL the international date line is so disfigured that you can actually go forward in time if you travel to the islands below Hawaii.
0d1JM TIL in 1831 four countries claimed a new island in the Mediterranean that disappeared again only six months later