› added 11 years ago

93

TIL right before President William McKinley was assassinated at a public reception, he had given his trademark good luck charm, a red carnation, to a 12-year old girl in the crowd.

Read more wikipedia.org

via reddit.com

LQ6Gm TIL that the avian magnetic compass of the European Robin has been extensively researched and uses vision-based magnetoreception, in which the Robin's ability to sense the magnetic field of the earth for navigation is affected by the light entering the bird's eye.
6K6w TIL… that on Saturn and Jupiter it literally rains diamonds
KYvv4 TIL that 2 MK 45 nuclear torpedos, each with a W34 11 kiloton nuclear warhead, are on the ocean floor with the remains of the USS Scorpion nuclear-powered submarine, which sank in 1968.
9g8X TIL in 2013, J.K. Rowling secretly released a book under a different name in order to release a book “without hype and expectation.” When she was revealed to be the author, the book surged from 4,709th on Amazon to the 1st best-selling novel.
JYBOV Computer scientist, mathematician, and all-around supergenius Alan Turing, who played a pivotal role in breaking secret German codes during WWII and developing the conceptual framework for the modern general purpose computer, was also a cracking good runner.