› added 3 years ago

541

TIL Switzerland finally dismantled last Cold War-era explosives from a bridge leading to Germany. They built such defenses to protect the country in the time of invasion!

Read more nationalpost.com

via reddit.com

xVWAb TIL that sugar molecules have "handedness" (like, left hand vs right hand), and that all of them are right handed. There are artificial sweeteners that are left-handed, but still the same molecule, and so cannot be absorbed by the human body. They're still sweet!
neWVd TIL the theme song for Saved by the Bell was written by composer Scott Gayle against the implicit instructions of Peter Engel. Though Engel had not been able to keep the show from being named Saved by the Bell, he was determined to prevent the phrase from showing up in the theme.
MejPB TIL Clarence Birdseye, inventor of frozen foods, had previously worked as a hunter for the US government. Seeking to find a cure for Rocky Mountain Spotted Fever, Birdseye was assigned to collect small animals and search them for the ticks which transmitted the disease. He found nearly 4,500 ticks.
mxP7v TIL the Pyramids are so well built that when a Sultan's workers tried to destroy a small Pyramid 3000 years after its construction, they could only move 1-2 stones a day and gave up after creating only a gash after eight months
W8LB TIL Rutka Laskier, a Jewish girl from Poland who died in Auschwitz at the age of 14, wrote a diary describing her experiences under Nazi occupation. Her diary was published in 2006 and she has become known as the “Polish Anne Frank.”