› added 5 years ago

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TIL in 1960, an Australian father won nearly $3 million (adjusted AU$) in the lottery, with his picture getting plastered all over the news. Shortly after, his 8-year-old son was kidnapped for ransom and eventually murdered. This changed anonymity laws for lottery winners in Australia forever.

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oL47 TIL in 2016, inspired by an ancient toy called a whirligig, Manu Prakash developed the Paperfuge. The hand-powered centrifuge made of paper, string, and plastic weighs about 2 grams, costs less than a quarter to make, and can spin biological samples in circles at an astonishing 125,000 rpm.
NXQnN TIL there is a Japanese organization, White Hands, which offers "ejaculation help" for males with disabilities who cannot physically masturbate due to paralysis, muscle atrophy, incurable disease, or cerebral palsy.
W8e8 TIL that African American slaves used songs to deliver encoded messages of underground railroads indicating instructions of where to go.
5YKDr TIL the US military tried to develop a "gay bomb" that would use an aphrodisiac chemical to cause enemy troops to have strong homosexual feelings, which was supposed to damage morale and discipline in a non-lethal way.
j6VPX TIL Robert Oppenheimer thought highly of physicist Hans Bethe and chose him to head the Theoretical Division at Los Alamos. After the War, Bethe declined to participate in developing thermonuclear weapons as he believed that the world would not be worth preserving after a war with such weapons