› added 12 years ago

91

TIL of a Russian scientist who in 1978 was hit in the head with a proton beam travelling close to the speed of light. Despite the fact that the beam tunnelled through his head and damaged brain tissue, he was still able to complete a Ph.D.

Read more wikipedia.org

via reddit.com

GYj9j TIL That Reverse Racing was a huge and very challenging motor sport in the Netherlands thanks to the sale of DAF cars that had no speed limit for driving in reverse. It was eventually stopped because those cars were becoming collectors items and the sport was considered too dangerous.
61jm TIL that there was a now extinct species of crocodile that could gallop.
1anm7 TIL the majority of infections from swimming pools and hot tubs are caused by cryptosporidium, a diarrheal disease caused by microscopic parasites which are released (anally) into the water and then consumed (orally) by fellow swimmers. Hotel pools are the primary place of infection.
pYooN TIL there's a difference between button-down and a button-up shirts. A button-down shirt has small buttons on the collar to keep it in place, while a button-up shirt has no collar buttons. Button-down shirts are more casual (for example in the choice of fabric) and button-up shirts are more formal.
RrM8 TIL that electronic musician Aphex Twin owns a tank, which he acquired through a ‘shady kind of exchange’ - “It’s easy to get carried away when you’re raving down the thoroughfare in a steel-hulled tank…. You don’t even have to signal, people simply get right out of your way.”