› added 9 years ago

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TIL that in 1971 there was a failed attempt to adapt Dune to film. It would have included Salvador Dali, Orson Welles, and Mick Jagger acting with music by Pink Floyd. Its failure caused the SFX head to go into a psychiatric hospital where he later wrote the script for “Alien”.

p8RRG TIL in 1951, Natalie Carbone Mangini became the first female scientist at Westinghouse. They meant to hire a man but they misread her resume and gave her an interview when she showed up. As a radiochemist, she worked on the world's first full-scale atomic reactor and the first nuclear submarine.
MenVK TIL The spike on the German Pickelhaube helmet was supposed to function as a blade tip, designed to deflect sword blows aimed at the head. The Pickelhaube offered almost no protection from bullets & shrapnel to German soldiers during WWI.
grNm9 TIL that humidifier disinfectants in South Korea caused 1,814 confirmed deaths and an estimated 18,000 total deaths, with 58% mortality in children and 53% in adults requiring lung transplants, before the chemicals were banned in 2011.
W79yN TIL male kangaroos have two penises that sit below the balls, females have 3 vaginas, and in the process of trying to find out why/ how this works, I learned echidnas have 4 penises but only 2 can get hard at once (wtf even is nature!?)
e0Rkn TIL that in Norse mythology at the end of the world (Ragnarok) the gods--Odin, Thor, Loki and the others--as well as all humans, will die. Evil triumphs over good, and the world will be engulfed in water.