› added 4 years ago

200

TIL Sir Frederick Banting, the Nobel-Prize-winning discoverer of insulin, created the first private biological weapon research centre in 1940. Soon afterwards, the US government was also pressed to perform such research by their British allies who feared a German attack with biological weapons.

Read more ncbi.nlm.nih.gov

via reddit.com

R7ax4 TIL the canonical reason for most of the alien races to be humanoid in Star Trek is an ancient humanoid species seeding the oceans of many worlds with DNA codes 4.5 billion years before the start of the series, directing the evolution of life towards a physical pattern similar to their own.
kOrOg TIL that between 2014 and 2016 an Australian electrician bunked off work roughly 140 times to play golf, covering his tracks using a crisp packet as a Faraday cage to block an electronic tracker that would have pinpointed his location.
bAn7 TIL the word “bully” was first used in the 1530s to mean “sweetheart”. In the 1700s, pimps began to be called called bullies because they were “lovers” (as well as “abusers”) of their prostitutes. It is thought that the meaning of the word bully eventually changed to its current one as a result.
PYPpO TIL Christopher Reeve's accident was so severe that he needed surgery to reattach his skull and spine. While awaiting the surgery, a man in a blue hat and yellow scrubs met with him, jokingly claiming he was a proctologist and that Reeves needed a rectal exam. That man was Robin Williams.
N7YLN TIL about the Rainman Twins. Kay and Flo are the only identical twin autistic savant sisters to exist.