› added 5 months ago

16

TIL Roald Dahl published a short story called "The Great Automatic Grammatizator" about a machine that can automatically produce award-winning books. It ends with the author praying for the strength to "let our children starve" rather than sign over his work to be used in the machine.

Read more wikipedia.org

via reddit.com

KO6Gw TIL that the opposite of deja vu is jamais vu. It is most commonly experienced when a person momentarily does not recognise a word or, less commonly, a person or place, that she or he knows. This can be achieved by anyone by repeatedly writing or saying a specific word out loud.
XEBND TIL Lice were so prevalent during the middle ages that delousing became a social activity. People would sit down and have a chat or gossip while removing eachother's lice.
v1A5x TIL that Nebraska community college student Katy Ayers grew a canoe out of mushroom roots (mycelium) to prove fungi is a bio-friendly building material. It floats with two passengers, but when it gets wet it fruits (sprouts mushrooms). Katy plans to get a Ph.D. in mycology then help save the planet.
e0YW4 TIL of the Kengir Gulag Uprising, where inmates assumed control over a camp. Due to the large body of educated inmates the 40 days of freedom saw the creation of plays, an ex-noble organizing a café, priests organizing marriages, engineers creating improvised radios and a hydroelectric powerstation
b9xZQ TIL Dogecoin, the cryptocurrency featuring Shiba Inu dogs which was largely created as a fun parody, actually reached a US$2,000,000,000 market capitalization in January 2018.