› added 9 years ago

1696

TIL that according to a joint study conducted by Northwestern and Princeton Universities, the United States is not a democracy, but is officially an oligarchy.

Read more bbc.com

via reddit.com

p8PKN TIL two right-wing political advisors, Lyn Nofziger and Frank Mankiewicz, convinced President Reagan to halt metrication in the US by dissolving the US Metric Board, effectively killing the Metric Conversion Act of 1975.
KYvpa TIL in a family with twelve children, six of the boys were diagnosed with schizophrenia and were later found to possess a genetic mutation that is so vital to brain function that it could help researchers understand how schizophrenia works.
VMkXm TIL of William Rankin, a fighter pilot who survived ejecting into a thunderstorm. He encountered very low temperature, frostbite, massive wind and lightning, severe decompression, and nearly drowned from breathing in rain water. Overall, he was in the cloud for more than 40 minutes.
BgEaD TIL about the North Sea Flood of 1953, when a night time storm surge overwhelmed sea defences in the Netherlands, north-west Belgium, and eastern England and Scotland, with a mean flood height of 5.6m/18'4" over sea level, resulting in over 2,000 deaths on land and over 200 at sea
kO5X5 TIL the gopher tortoise is a species of turtle native to the southeastern United States. The gopher tortoise is seen as a keystone species because it digs deep burrows that provide shelter for at least 360 other animal species, often preserving their lives during conflagrations.