› added 5 years ago

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TIL about Ern Malley, a fictitious Australian poet created to ridicule modernist poetry. A modernist journal devoted an issue to his poems and the editor was sued for immoral material. A policeman said "I don't know what 'incestuous' means, but I think there is a suggestion of indecency about it."

d81Dd TIL that the elements Uranium, Neptunium, and Plutonium were all named after their respective planets. Even if Pluto was stripped of planetary status it's still got 1 more element named after it than Jupiter!
jNlZp TIL Scientology Founder L. Ron Hubbard was placed in command of of a Navy Ship during WW2. He wound up being engaged in combat with absolutely nothing for 68 hours and accidentally conducted live fire exercises on a Mexican Island, which led to him being fired.
gd77 TIL that NCAA player George Glamack (AKA “the Blind Bomber”) had such poor eyesight that he never looked where he was shooting. Instead, he looked at the black lines on the court to know where he was in reference to the basket and measured the shot. He scored the forth-highest total in UNC history.
KOQNE By the 2030s, computer data storage may surpass 1 yottabyte (1024), the largest number with an official metric prefix.
DQ0be TIL - After the USS White Sands was decommissioned in 1974, a company then bought it and had to move the ship with an 81' beam through the 80'-wide Ballard Locks. It was done by weighing down one side of the ship and then transiting the locks while tilted 38 degrees, at high tide.