› added 8 years ago

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TIL that there is a scientific measurement for the ‘risk of death’ of any action: the micromort. If an activity is rated as one micromort, you would have a one in a million chance of dying while doing it. Running a marathon is ~7 micromorts, sky diving 10, and climbing Mount Everest 40,000!

p84XO Today I learned that, in the 1920's, a new "fixed length" calendar with 13 months of 28 days each, was voted in by a League of Nations special committee. Although this calendar never gained widespread adoption, it remained the official calendar of the Kodak company until 1989.
nvmo TIL After Charles Upham’s 3rd attempt of escape from the Germans in WW2, The guard in the machinegun-tower later told other prisoners that he refrained from shooting Upham out of sheer respect
Z8R6R TIL The Weber–Fechner law is a phenomenon that helps explain why it is difficult to notice a woman’s hair cut, why we typically don’t think twice about an extra $150 on a $20,000 car purchase, and why a $1 savings on a $2.99 box of cereal seems like a great deal compared to a $79.99 shirt.
PbeJ TIL that males have disproportionately larger noses than females (at least those of European descent) - not because they tend to be larger overall, but because of how muscle is distributed differently between men and women
NXeNE TIL In the 1940's, the Japanese army designed specialized bombs full of live mice, specifically to infect Chinese and Korean civilians with the Plague (which has a 70% mortality rate without immediate treatment).