› added 11 years ago

257

TIL of “Abortion Doping”, a rumoured practice where female athletes get pregnant, use the hormonal benefits for their performance, and abort the pregnancy.

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via reddit.com

lJG5 TIL Norwegians pay half tax in November, so everyone has more money for Christmas.
p8WMG TIL Pakistan’s Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif was brought down because he created forged documents using a Microsoft font which didn’t exist when they were supposed to have been written.
6EMd8 Hong Kong-based students, Sum Ming Wong and Kin Pong Li designed a door handle that uses light to always keep itself sterilized. The students were inspired by the SARS outbreak in the 2000s and figured that a self-sanitizing door handle is more effective than the chemical-based cleaning processes we are using right now. The handle is made of a glass tube with aluminum caps at each end and the entire handle is covered in a powdered photocatalytic coating made from a mineral called titanium dioxide. The bacteria is decomposed through a chemical reaction that is activated by UV light reacting with the thin coating on the glass tube.
vym4 TIL that 2000 yrs ago Heron of Alexandria invented the first vending machine, mechanically opening temple doors or binary operating machines for special effects in theater
Me0M8 TIL that the label "Made in Germany" was invented by the British in the late 1800s to harm German industries, who they considered cheap copycats. Antagonized by this German industry started a huge quality offensive and the label turned into a seal of quality.