› added 6 years ago

156

TIL that 89% of people who own a programmable thermostat don't actually program it.

dDNj8 TIL that Roald Dahl (the author) also contributed to medical science by helping develop the Wade-Dahl-Till valve, a cerebral shunt used to treat hydrocephalus after his son was in an accident
yLWw TIL NBC’s Dateline aired a segment showing gas tanks on General Motors pickup trucks tended to explode on even low-speed impacts. G.M. responded with an investigation showing that Dateline had rigged explosions in the show by affixing model-rocket engines to a truck’s underbody.
oB11A TIL because it extends into the Eastern hemisphere, Alaska is the western most, eastern most and the northern most state of USA.
KOO7Q Imagine yourself at a concert hall looking at a symphonic orchestra on stage. Have you ever noticed that high-pitched strings sit left of low-pitched strings? Going from left to right, one usually sees violins, violas, cellos and double basses. That is, one moves from high pitches on the left to low pitches on the right. Why? The orchestra’s arrangement is not a cultural oddity, like driving on the right side of the road. Rather, it is due to our own biological makeup. Higher pitches tend to be better processed by the left hemisphere of the brain, while lower pitches tend to be better processed by a similar region in the right hemisphere. This organisation is thought to have repercussions far beyond music, perhaps even helping to explain why language is mostly processed in the left hemisphere. So the part of my brain that better processes high sounds sits where the higher-pitched instruments sit: on the left. But that’s not the end of the story.
v14ZB TIL Sasha Baron Cohen once used an alter-ego to interview a concierge in Las Vegas who admitted to possess contact information for deliverance of kids down to the age of 8. Sasha left the scene out of his show and provided the footage to FBI who decided not to pursue the case.