› added 9 years ago

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TIL that the BTK serial killer had a job installing security systems. Many of his clients booked the company to stop BTK from entering their homes, unaware that BTK himself was installing them.

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9Y7bM TIL Buster Keaton's film The Navigator (1924) was filmed on the USAT Buford. The ship had previously been used for the First Red Scare, as the "Soviet Ark" to deport 249 "undesirables" from the United States to revolutionary Russia, among them the noted anarchist Emma Goldman and Alexander Berkman.
4Xo4R TIL in WW1, glow worms were gathered and used in lamps to light the trenches. Also, due to their extreme ability to detect particles in the air, slugs were used to detect gas attacks. If the slugs closed their breathing spires and contracted, troops would know to put on their gas masks
4k4YJ TIL that there is a gemstone twice are bright as diamond & 1000 times more rare.
b9Pp0 TIL:word mummy derives from Arabic word "mumiya" a substance which was used as a medicine .Bitumen, another substance was used in process of mummfication had a similar name"mumia".Europeans confused the words and thought "mumiya" refers to real mummies and thus started eating mummies as medicine
Y7VpB TIL about the Mars to Stay initiative, which proposes that the first astronauts sent to Mars go with the intent to stay. Unused emergency return vehicles would be turned into settlements as soon as habitability becomes evident. This would both reduce cost and ensure permanent settlement.