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TIL George Lucas owns the term “Droid” and Motorola must pay him for the rights to use the word “Droid” for their phones.

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neXd9 TIL that in 1938 early aviator Douglas Corrigan was denied permission to fly from New York to Ierland. Since he was denied he planned to fly to California instead. 28 hours later he arrived in Ireland, telling officials that he must have mistakenly gone the wrong way.
wJGM TIL that Marie Curie’s notebook has to be kept in a lead-lined box, and won’t be safe to handle for another 1,601 years. If you want to visit some of her other person items, you have to sign a liability waiver.
mx1dE If it’s a particularly contagious virus, it would spread across the planet in a year. “If it starts in New York, it’s going to be in London certainly within a week,” says Ira Longini, a biostatistician at the University of Washington and the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Center in Seattle who uses computer models to analyze how viruses globe-trot. “And from there, it will quickly travel to the rest of North America and Europe.” For Longini’s computer forecasts to become reality, though, certain conditions would need to be met.
Yr0B TIL James Earl Jones used to use Darth Vader as a CB radio handle while traveling cross country and spoke in character. “The truck drivers would really freak out — for them, it was Darth Vader. I had to stop doing that.”
j6Qdp TIL that a pioneer of the idea "8 hours labor, 8 hours recreation, 8 hours rest" was a wealthy 19th century businessman who tested out the idea in his own factory and in a town he founded as part of his embrace of socialism and radically equal society