› added 6 years ago

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TIL Semantic satiation (also semantic saturation) is a psychological phenomenon in which repetition causes a word or phrase to temporarily lose meaning for the listener, who then perceives the speech as repeated meaningless sounds.

DKJp TIL The Canadian Tomb of the Unknown Soldier is designed for the sun to shine directly on the headstone only once a year, on Remembrance Day (Nov 11, 11am)
eR1D TIL that the Greek mathematician Pythagoras created his own cult which forbid the consuming or touching beans, and according to legend died when being chased by assassins and refusing to escape through a bean field.
QJmKL TIL that a photon of light can travel the 150 million kilometres from the Sun to the Earth, and in that same time, a gamma ray in the Sun's core will travel only about 13 centimetres. It can take 100,000 years from the core of the Sun to get to the surface — where it bursts out at speed of light.
8eQj4 TIL Aristotle's History of Animals contains several facts that were deemed fantasy until the 19th century. Such observations include octopuses having a sperm tentacle and dogfish growing inside their mother's body. The book also has obvious errors like assuming flies have four legs.
M8eK TIL that in 1932 a riot invaded Newfoundland’s government building. The prime minister barely escaped injury and resigned. In 1933 the country—like Canada, an independent English-speaking country neighboring the US—gave up self-government and voluntarily became a British colony again.