› added 11 years ago

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TIL that in 1847, a doctor performed an amputation in 25 seconds, operating so quickly that he accidentally amputated his assistant’s fingers as well. Both later died of sepsis, and a spectator reportedly died of shock, resulting in the only known procedure with a 300% mortality rate.

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Y7BVd TIL in France there is a group called the Garden Gnome Liberation Front which steals garden gnomes with the goal of "freeing" them and "returning them to the wild".
l7Rg5 TIL about Reverse Polish notation, which is a different style of writing math equations. 3+4 is instead written as 3 4 +. One pro is that it removes the need for the Order of Operations.
Z89dB TIL there are species of tiger moths capable of jamming bat ecolocation by producing their own clicks, up to 4500 per second.
Ygbd TIL 50% of Earth’s internal heat is from radioactive decay. Earth used to be hotter, before elements with shorter half-lives were depleted.
E1GAd TIL that the concrete used by the Roman Empire has been proposed as an alternative to modern concrete. It's believed that it would have a substantially smaller environmental impact than our own in addition to being far more durable, surviving thousands of years in harsh conditions nearly unscathed.