› added 1 year ago

170

TIL That Ancient Egyptians didn't name their cats individually like dogs, instead they were all called by the Ancient Egyptian equivalent of "meow", or "Miu", an onomatopoetic reference to the sound that cats make.

E1jwV TIL that millisecond pulsars are stars that complete at least one full rotation in less than 10 milliseconds. The fastest spinning pulsar rotates 716 times per second, and is as consistent in its rotation as an atomic clock when measured across decades
b9pxQ TIL to gaslight someone, meaning to make one think they're going crazy, comes from the movie Gaslight (1944), where a husband tried to make his wife (Ingrid Bergman) think that very thing by dimming the gas lights in house and making her think she was imagining it.
PYgaL TIL duct tape is a recognized & effective treatment for common warts like verrucas. In blind clinical trials duct tape removed warts completely 85% of the time. The success rate for cryogenic treatments was 60%.
oRe98 TIL Harvard punter / receiver Pat McInally was the only NFL player to score a perfect 50/50 on the Wonderlic intelligence test in 1975. When he took it again in 2007 and got 1 question wrong he quipped "Missed one. Not a bad score after six concussions."
e0YLE TIL about "Folie à deux" aka Shared Delusional Disorder, which is a mental disorder where a delusional inducer influences secondary individuals into believing the delusion. It occurs most commonly between two people, but can occur between many people ("folie à plusieurs").