› added 11 years ago

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TIL of a new birth control method for men that has had a 100% success rate in test subjects so far. Developed by an Indian doctor, it works similar to an ‘on off’ switch, and would afford countless families across the globe an incredibly cheap method to control the size of their families.

pkQ4 TIL that when he was in hiding, Salman Rushdie immersed himself in Super Mario World, and joked that the best way to liberate Iran was to drop Nintendo consoles from the sky
KYGpE TIL in 1994, Unisys, the company holding a patent on the GIF, attempted to charge licensing fees for using GIFs. This sparked a backlash in the tech community, leading to the creation of the PNG format as a free alternative. Due to the outcry, Unisys ultimately abandoned its fee plans.
OojM6 TIL a Nuclear Ballistic Missile was almost launched from McConnell Air Force Base in 1980 because a technician loaded the wrong data into a computer. The crew was able to avoid the launch after switching off the main power to the building.
j6M8p TIL that archaeologists think that they’ve found the remains of Pliny the Elder, the author of the largest surviving Roman text, the encyclopedia called Naturalis Historia, who died trying to rescue people at Pompeii
1alGO TIL of Auguste Piccard, a Swiss physicist who invented a balloon and reached a record altitude of 9.8 miles in 1931. He then redesigned the balloon to be used underwater, and reached a record-breaking depth of 10,335ft in 1953.