› added 6 years ago

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TIL That Pluto was discovered in 1930 by a 23 year old farm boy with no degree in astronomy. He spent a year comparing photographs, looking for a star that changed positions in the sky. He would later teach at New Mexico State.

mx9WM TIL in 2007, São Paulo introduced the Clean City Law. The result was a near-total ban of billboards, digital signs, ostentatious business signs, and advertising on buses and taxis. It turns out that some massive billboards where hiding whole favelas that few knew existed.
l7Yp1 TIL that the theme song from Mission Impossible get is it's iconic beat of "long long short short" from the Morse code of "M" and "I", which is long long short short.
XEWL8 TIL of a 2011 study that analyzed the decisions made by a panel of judges who spent several days reviewing parole applications. It turned out that the likelihood of a prisoner getting parole was mostly determined by how hungry the judges were at different times in the day.
x6LJw TIL That In 1996 during an SAS training exercise 21 year old Bear Grylls broke his back after falling from 16,000 feet due to a torn parachute. 2 years later he climbed Mt. Everest becoming the youngest Briton to reach the world's highest peak at the time.
MYEB TIL that the word ‘plastic’ in 'plastic surgery’ is in no way a reference to the petroleum based engineered material, but actually denotes 'sculpting or reshaping’, from the Greek derived word 'πλαστική’ (plastikē), “the art of modelling” of malleable flesh.