› added 11 years ago

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TIL that James Cameron’s early script for Spider-Man (2002) was laced with profanity and strong violence and featured a lengthy and graphic sex scene between Peter Parker and Mary Jane.

6EMd8 Hong Kong-based students, Sum Ming Wong and Kin Pong Li designed a door handle that uses light to always keep itself sterilized. The students were inspired by the SARS outbreak in the 2000s and figured that a self-sanitizing door handle is more effective than the chemical-based cleaning processes we are using right now. The handle is made of a glass tube with aluminum caps at each end and the entire handle is covered in a powdered photocatalytic coating made from a mineral called titanium dioxide. The bacteria is decomposed through a chemical reaction that is activated by UV light reacting with the thin coating on the glass tube.
69MjX TIL that there's a sport called Extreme ironing, which consists of ironing in perilous or incongruous conditions. It can be practiced on a mountain, while snowboarding or skiing, on top of large statues... Its appeal lies in mixing the thrill of danger “with the satisfaction of a well-pressed shirt"
X0Z78 TIL 'Changes' is a cover
lod9a TIL about Benford's law: if you take natural sets of numbers (like lenghts of rivers, population of cities, financial transactions..), probability of first number is not even. There is 30% probability for number to start with 1, and only to 5% for 9. It is so reliable it is used to defect fraud!
9jBG TIL that British spies used semen as invisible ink during WWI. The method was invented by Captain Sir Mansfield Cumming.