› added 11 years ago

87

TIL that a Canadian politician, late to his own dinner party, may have inadvertently initiated the fall of the USSR.

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xZe1 TIL that the microcontroller inside a Macbook charger is about as powerful as the original Macintosh computer.
XExmX TIL that one of the principle decoders of the Mayan written language, Yuri Knorozov, was forbidden from visiting South America during his research and didn't go until 38 years later. He also bears a truly uncanny resemblance to a supervillain.
MekoW TIL the Founder of Mormonism, Joseph Smith, successfully evaded arrest for attempted murder by raising an army of 5,000 men after illegally declaring martial law, only to be convinced to return by supporters and subsequently murdered by a mob.
aba0 TIL From 1934-1942 Franklin D. Roosevelt had the government finance the planting of 220 million trees to combat the dust bowl.
VMKVQ TIL there are microscopic living things in solid rock up to 7 km deep, called Endoliths. So little energy is available they undergo cell division once every 100 years, and some may only divide once every 10,000 years.