› added 12 years ago

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TIL that in Sweden volunteers can sign up to receive a text message if someone is having a cardiac arrest 500 m from them so that they can start performing CPR before the paramedics arrive. There are currently 9600 volunteers.

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via reddit.com

Y7kkW TIL that feather pillows actually date back to Roman times, but they fell out of favor and/or affordability for several hundred years
7ryW7 TIL that the name "Ivan the Terrible" reflects the older English usage of terrible as in "inspiring fear or terror; dangerous; or powerful" and not the more modern connotations in English where terrible means "defective" or "evil".
5VRVD TIL about composer Henry Cowell's "theory of musical relativity" that says rhythm & pitch exist on the same continuum. He argued that if you speed up a rhythm enough, it eventually becomes a perceivable pitch, implying that tempo & tone are fundamentally the same phenomenon at different frequencies.
pYxgN TIL about Genie, a feral child who was tied up in her father's bathroom for most of her childhood and never developed the ability to speak. Despite massive advances in Genie's social skills and non-verbal communication - Genie never learned how to acquire language after her rescue.
awG9M TIL While filming Ghost Rider: Spirit of Vengeance in Romania, Nicolas Cage spent a night alone in Bran Castle near Transylvania, the inspiration for Dracula’s residence in the original Bram Stoker novel. Cage stayed in the fictional vampire’s home to ‘channel his energy.’