› added 10 years ago

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TIL: Winston Churchill suffered from severe depression which he referred to as his ‘black dog’, although others had used this metaphor before him.

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J1Kn1 TIL about Old Tom, a killer whale who, along with his pod, cooperated with humans in hunting efforts from the mid 19th century to as late as 1930
nk1P TIL During World War I, before the traction splint was introduced, femur fractures had an 80% mortality rate. After the splint was introduced, the rate dropped to around 8%.
4kg TIL that Tesla said that if you stick a rod far enough into space the temperature difference would create an electrical current and a motor could be run off it and that this (while not doing any work itself) did not violate the second law of thermodynamics.
wJyJ TIL an ultralight craft, like a paper airplane, could in theory be dropped from space and land safely on Earth. There have even been discussions about releasing one from the International Space Station to see what would happen.
Bryvb TIL when Paul Verhoeven first received the script for Robocop, he threw it away in disgust after glancing through it. His wife picked it up from the bin and read through it more thoroughly, and persuaded him that it had more substance than he initially thought.