› added 8 years ago

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TIL of the ADE 651, a fake bomb detector consisting a swivelling antenna mounted via a hinge to a plastic handgrip, requiring no battery, and supposedly charged by the user’s static electricity. It sold for $60,000 until its creator was sentenced to 10 years imprisonment for fraud.

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nRdP TIL: Coyotes ‘play’ with skunks in order to get sprayed and camouflage their scent making it easier to stalk other prey.
kOPe1 TIL of Fibrodysplasia ossificans progressiva, a rare genetic disease that gradually turns your entire body into bone. Surgical removal of the bone only causes more bone to grow in its place.
loWmG TIL Daily Mail editor Lord Rothermere was a friend of Benito Mussolini and Adolf Hitler and wrote articles such as "Hurrah for the Blackshirts". The Spectator condemned Rothermere's article commenting that, "The Blackshirts, like the Daily Mail, appeal to people unaccustomed to thinking.”
xQrD TIL George Washington’s best spy, code named ‘Culper Jr.’, was only identified as Robert Townsend nearly 150 years after the war because a Long Island historian named Morton Pennypacker recognized his handwriting from some business receipts and matched it to intelligence correspondence.
1OkP TIL that Ghengis Khan’s conquests killed so many people, it increased the oxygen in the Earth’s atmosphere.