› added 8 years ago

119

TIL that in response to a “catastrophic emergency,” the United States government can be suspended and replaced with a single, combined branch “coordinated” by the President, indefinitely.

Read more wikipedia.org

via ift.tt

4jQJ TIL the director of the Guinness Breweries, became in 1951 involved in an argument about the fastest bird in Europe. The realisation there is no book for world records made him create “The Guinness Book of Records” that itself holds the world record as the best-selling copyrighted book of all time.
v1op8 TIL the words you use when questioning witnesses greatly affects their answer. They showed study participants video of a car crash and asked them to estimate the speed. Their estimates got progressively larger when using the verbs contacted, hit, bumped, collided, smashed in the question.
loO5A TIL many pioneers of breakdancing credit their exposure to Kung Fu from watching Bruce Lee movies, which were popular among African American audiences, with having a large influence on the improvised acrobatics and dance battles that are often associated with the dance style
oBkj7 TIL that there is a monument called the"Georgia Guidestones" that contain instructions on how to rebuild the world after an apocalypse in 8 different languages. It also serves as a sundial, calendar and a compass.
JYowj TIL of Robert Martinson, an American sociologist who became notable nationwide in the early '70s for his influential conclusion that prison rehabilitation was ineffective. He killed himself a few years later, after he published a reversal of his stance that went largely unnoticed.