› added 1 year ago

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TIL that Mike Brown, the astronomer most responsible for demoting Pluto to a dwarf planet, titled his memoir "How I Killed Pluto and Why It Had It Coming".

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via reddit.com

Lkb7Z TIL that Karate isn't Japanese. "Karate" can literally be translated as "China Hand".
b9Bxa TIL Nazi spies tried infiltrating Russia in WW2 using fake passports; the passports were recognized as fraud because Russian passports use iron staples that stain the pages with rust, while Nazis used steel. During the Cold War, American spies made the same mistake
XZPX TIL Ford’s Model T could achieve over 20 MPG and run on gasoline, kerosene, or ethanol.
GA7rG TIL: When an electric eel senses prey/ a threat, it sends a signal through its nervous system to the electrocytes. Nerve fibres join each electrocyte on one of its sides. The arrival of a signal causes Na+ ions to flood into the cell. This flow gives rise to a discharge of electricity.
XEoO6 TIL that if the atom was the size of the observable universe, then the theoretical ‘string’ in string theory would be the size of a tree.