› added 4 months ago

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TIL: In the 15th century, an engineer named Orban offered to build a huge cannon for Constantinople. After they turned him down, he offered his services to the Ottomans who then used his cannon to attack Constantinople.

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6Vv7 TIL that penguins can drink salt water because they have a supraorbital gland, which lets them filtrate the salt from the water.
d8dM8 TIL many whiskeys in the saloons of the Old West contained added Strychnine, a lethal poison. Diluted Strychnine was thought to have curative effects, a belief reinforced by the fact that in many towns the poisoned whiskey was still safer to drink than the local available water.
5Ymon TIL of August Dvorak, who in 1936 invented a 'perfect keyboard' which is way more efficient than regular keyboards as it requires less finger motion and reduces errors compared to the standard QWERTY keyboard arrangement.
0wBLN TIL of Laura Bassi, the first woman to have a doctorate in science. She was privately tutored till she was 20, when the archbishop of Bologna noticed her talent and became her patron. She earned her doctorate at 21 by defending 49 theses before professors of the University of Bologna.
dK4r TIL that use of handguns in crime rose by 40% in the two years after they were banned in the UK