› added 6 years ago

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TIL the name of the metal cobalt comes from the kobold, a troublesome Germanic spirit that miners blamed for making cobalt ores poisonous.

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b94wE TIL about musician Gaelynn Lea ,winner of NPR’s Tiny Desk Concert competition, who was born with osteogenesis imperfecta, a genetic condition that causes complications in the development of bones and limbs.
mRNo TIL that in the wake of WWII, the combination of inexpensive geothermal power and high prices for imported fruit led to Iceland using the warmth from lava to grow banana trees.
loPO5 TIL Jesse James once gave a widow he was staying with $1400 to pay off a debt collector. James then hid and waited for the debt collector to leave, and then robbed the man as he left the widow's home.
AmRl TIL One researcher estimates that with current technology it would take 10,000 automated microscopes thirty years to map the connections between every neuron in a human brain, and 100 million terabytes of disk space to store the data.
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