› added 9 years ago

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TIL that Paris Metro trains drive on the right rather than the left and its tunnels are narrower than main-line ones in order to prevent it from being absorbed into the national railway network

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4XwVN TIL The Commonwealth of Kentucky didn't take the word "darkies" out of their official state song until 1986.
PY4mL TIL Carl Wieman, recipient of the 2001 Nobel in Physics, delivered a lecture outlining how he created a new state of matter called Bose-Einstein condensation (BEC). Einstein predicted BEC in 1925, and Wieman's techniques to make it in 1995 involved laser cooling and magnetic trapping on atoms
n8DG TIL when the bees in a region of China disappeared, people pollinated apple trees by hand using brushes made of chopsticks and chicken feathers. When humans pollinated, apple production increased 30-40%.
xVYAg Today I learned that Tom Petty did not usually allow his music to be played on television, but he let The Simpsons use his song "The Waiting" in the episode "The Cartridge Family" because he was a fan of the show.
ZknR TIL that Ada Lovelace, a female English mathematician and writer, wrote an algorithm in the mid 1800s designed to be carried out by a machine. As a result, she is often regarded as the first computer programmer.