› added 10 years ago

83

TIL when Dr. Jonas Salk (discoverer and developer of the first polio vaccine) was asked who owned the patent he replied “There is no patent. Could you patent the sun?” Forbes calculated the vaccine to be “worth” 7 billion dollars. Happy 100th birthday you magnificent bastard.

Read more wikipedia.org

via reddit.com

NXVGE TIL that woodlice are not insects, they are crustaceans and are related to lobsters.
Oo9og TIL about Carlos Kaiser, who managed to have a nearly 20-year career as a professional football (soccer) player despite rarely playing and never scoring. He faked injuries or got himself ejected to avoid having to play but still became a fan favorite. “Life,” he said, “is marketing.”
QNxY6 TIL In the early 17th century, people began to believe plaits were an external symptom of an internal illness. A growing plait was supposed to take the illness "out" of the body, and therefore it was rarely cut off; in addition, the belief that a cut-off plait could avenge itself
x6XOB TIL about Jane Wallis Burrell, the first CIA agent to die in service of the agency. She died on a runway in France in 1948 just 110 days after the Agency’s creation. She does not have a star on the memorial wall, as she did not qualify as the plane was commercially flown.
NrBP TIL An Irishman W.B. O'Shaughnessy introduced the therapeutic use of Cannabis to western medicine.