› added 12 years ago

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TIL as a PhD student, American mathematician George Bernard Dantzig showed up late to a statistics class and mistook two famous unsolved statistics problems as homework. He solved them and turned them in a week later, believing his assignment was overdue.

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o58o TIL in a dark room, it’s easier to see an object by not looking directly at it but rather next to it because of the distribution of cones and rods.
N7NP1 TIL a developer demolished a London pub without permission hoping to build flats in it's place but were forced to rebuild it in facsimile and it's due to reopen soon
bpJZ TIL Since 1997, US elected officials are exempted from drug testing
p8bop TIL that the details of the Manhattan Project were so secret that many workers had no idea why they did their jobs. A laundrywoman had a dedicated duty to "hold up an instrument and listen for a clicking noise" without knowing why. It was a Geiger counter testing the radiation levels of uniforms.
NXw6M TIL that a "Silent Man" in the UK repeatedly gets arrested for standing on one road to block traffic. He never speaks a word, not even to paramedics, police, the court, or his own lawyer. Ongoing for more than a decade. Everytime he is released, he repeats the crime and remains completely silent.