› added 5 years ago

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TIL that the current version of the Tomahawk cruise missile is capable of loitering over a target while sending back imagery to ground controllers before being commanded to dive on to the a target.

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LkjlZ TIL that nearly 40% of Americans expressed a negative opinion of "Wisian-Americans"—a fictitious group—in a survey about social attitudes that was conducted by the General Social Survey, a project of the National Science Foundation.
BgJBy TIL: Cats can land on their feet thanks to their unique collarbone-less skeleton and flexible backbone, which allow them to rotate mid-air and reorient their bodies. This ability, known as the "righting reflex," is enhanced by their capacity to manipulate their moment of inertia during free-fall.
XE6YD TIL Apollo 11 was landed on the moon using a computer that had 1300 times less processing power than iPhone 5s.
loxDV TIL that, despite the reputation of black cats, a black cat named Luna saved her human family from a house fire.The house burned down to the ground, but not before Luna woke her owner in time by pawing and biting her feet. Once awake, Emily Chappell-Root evacuated her family from the blaze.
xVYeD TIL that Chinese science fiction writer Chen Qiufan published a short story using paragraphs automatically generated by AI, based on his own writing. That story won him a literary prize in a contest moderated by an AI judge, over Nobel laureate Mo Yan