› added 2 months ago

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TIL the “Jennifer Aniston neuron” is a brain cell that responds to images of Jennifer Aniston.

Read more nature.com

via reddit.com

kOO6m TIL the use of the word “scoop” in the context of news stories started with fisherman scooping water sealed boxes (full of news) out of the ocean and delivering them to land before wired transatlantic communications negated the need to do so.
0wQPv TIL That the Mongol conquests are thought to be responsible for the deadliest acts in human history, with estimates of up to 5% of the world's population wiped out. Despite this, many of the Mongol victories were achieved without fighting, but instead through instilling terror in their victims.
0wXYp TIL I learned why we can “smell metals” when they don’t have a significant vapour pressure, sublimating etc. We smell the reaction of oils in our skin with the metal, producing detectable byproducts such as ketones, not the metal itself.
wL51 TIL Isaac Newton was like Dirty Harry in 17th century London - chasing counterfeiters of the Royal Mint, bribing crooks for info, threatening criminals and their famlies, eventually focusing on his nemesis. And then he burned all his notes to cover his dirty ways of catching crooks.
dD48K TIL rocket scientists call explosions a Rapid Unscheduled Dissasembly (RUD)