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TIL that the movie character Raymond from the Academy Award winning movie Rain man was based on real life savant, Kim Peek. He could simultaneously read the left side and right side pages of a book at the same time and had complete memory of over 12,000 books.

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Me7AA National Geographic Emerging Explorer Leslie Dewan is helping to revolutionize the nuclear power industry by designing a safer, more efficient alternative to today’s reactors.Conventional nuclear reactors only use about 3 to 4 percent of uranium’s accessible energy. The energy left behind is what makes conventional nuclear waste—radioactive for hundreds of thousands of years—so dangerous. Extracting more of the available energy reduces the radioactive lifetime of the waste. To this end, Dewan is helping to develop techniques that extract 96 percent of the available energy.
D1xoj TIL if you trace back the family tree of a drone bee, the number of parents in each generation follows the Fibonacci sequence.
8akP8 TIL there is a jigsaw puzzle designer that specifically targets the wealthy with his extremely difficult high-quality wooden puzzles. His name is Steve Richardson but people call him the 'Chief Tormentor' and his puzzle can go as high as $8,000.
YpoR7 TIL Jim Henson originally wanted the Muppets to be for adults and didn't see his characters as a vehicle for children's education and family entertainment. Indeed, he first envisioned something closer to South Park rather than Sesame Street and in the 1950s they did dark comedy in commercials.
R5ZRl TIL Among other ships used in the production of the film “The Battle of the River Plate”, the warships HMS Cumberland and HMNZS Achilles played themselves since they had both survived the war.