› added 7 years ago

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TIL about the "Dumbest Member of Congress" William L. Scott, US Senator from Virginia who being briefed by members of the military about missile silos in the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics, reportedly said "Wait a minute! I'm not interested in agriculture. I want the military stuff."

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mxreY TIL in 2012 three researchers proved that many classic Nintendo games are NP-hard by developing a framework for reducing the 3SAT problem to any platform game. This means the question "given a finite level of a game, can the player move from start to finish?" is not computable in polynomial time.
Eg9Od TIL Leonardo da Vinci designed a 12-barreled rapid-fire type of machine gun which was intended to be both lightweight and quite mobile on the battlefield. While he worked on such weapons for the benefit of his patrons, he also did so out of intellectual curiosity.
pY1wG TIL During the Great Depression, Stores Began Layaway Plans for people who cannot afford an item, when Credit Cards became mainstream in the 80s, the former declined.
KYlMJ TIL that there is a non-alcoholic drink named after child star, Freddy Bartholomew. Unlike the Shirley Temple, this one is made from ginger ale and lime juice.
dvEr TIL the real-life home that inspired the movie ‘UP’ is a century-old farmhouse whose owner refused to sell it to developers, even for an inflated price of $1,000,000. Having lived there for over 50 years, she was content to let them build a giant biotech complex all around it.