› added 13 years ago

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TIL in 1946, a Georgia Tech Graduate Student and amateur photographer rushed to the seen of a hotel fire and snapped a photo that would would win him a Pulitzer. The photo is of a woman jumping from the 11th story to escape the flames, and led to new safety regulations across the US

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OAWe TIL Humans are capable of using the same principles of echolocation that bats, dolphins, and whales use to navigate their surrounds; One of the better-known demonstrators of this phenomenon is Daniel Kish, a man who can ride a bicycle and hike in the wilderness despite having no eyes at all
ZpDx4 TIL Germany's law mandates up to one-year imprisonment for failing to assist someone in danger or involved in an accident
m1XXv TIL James Cameron was in talks to direct a Spider-Man movie in the mid-nineties. Leonardo DiCaprio would star in a "gritty" take on the story, but subsequent lawsuits--and Marvel declaring bankruptcy in 1996--canned the project.
YpAMA TIL that the closest living relative of all whales is the hippopotamus. Whales evolved from a terrestrial(land) animal, this is the reason whales can't breathe under water like fishes and need to come up for air. They literally evolved backwards, but in the process have the become the largest mammal
78Bvb TIL of Mary Somerville, a Scottish writer, polymath and the world's first ever scientist, the person for whom the word 'scientist' was invented. She studied mathematics and astronomy, and was admitted as one of the first female members of the Royal Astronomical Society