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149

TIL that the communicator used by Qui-Gon Jinn in Star Wars: Episode I- The Phantom Menace is actually a Gillete Sensor Excel women’s razor

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via reddit.com

NXaGM TIL of Malört, a liqueur almost exclusive to Chicago, described as "like swallowing a burnt condom filled with gasoline." Drinking a shot is considered a Windy City rite of passage.
7ry7L TIL that it is illegal in the US to trade futures contracts on onions and "motion picture box office receipts" due to the Onion Futures Act
xVVGk Of all the bodies in our solar system, the sun is probably the one we want to give the widest berth. It gushes radiation, and even though its surface is the coolest part of the star, it burns at about 9,940°F, hot enough to incinerate just about any material. As such, there are no plans to send a manned mission in its direction anytime soon (Mars is much more interesting, anyway), but it can't hurt to figure out at what distance a person would want to turn back. You can get surprisingly close. The sun is about 93 million miles away from Earth, and if we think of that distance as a football field, a person starting at one end zone could get about 95 yards before burning up.
BrvRe TIL that the earliest known depiction of Christ is a piece of Roman graffiti mockingly depicting Jesus as a crucified donkey
VV4Z TIL the first webcam was created to help people avoid pointless trips to the coffee room at the University of Cambridge. The camera provided a live 128×128 greyscale picture of the state of the coffee pot, which was located in the corridor just outside the so-called Trojan Room.