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TIL Photography was invented simultaneously by multiple people in different parts of the world using vastly different processes to produce a fixed image on a surface. Nicéphore Niépce / Louis Daguerre (France, 1826, 1839), Hércules Florence (Brazil, 1832), Henry Fox Talbot (England, 1834).

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Vb9m TIL Navy Chief Warrant Officer John Walker began spying for the Soviets in 1968 when he walked into the Soviet Embassy in Washington, D.C., sold a top secret document for several thousand dollars, and negotiated an ongoing salary of $500 to $1,000 a week
PYjRJ TIL how "a figment of the imagination" is a tautology. A tautology is a phrase or idiom in which the same idea is expressed twice using different words, like "it was sufficient enough".
epR7b TIL Zurich's historic Semper Observatory showcases around 300 measuring instruments, sundials, astrolabes, and the telescope that astronomer Rudolf Wolf used to count sunspots. Wolf was a pioneer in the topic of sunspot research
grvQ4 TIL Almost straight after deployment, Hubble’s optics were found to be flawed. The best solution was to build replacement instruments that fixed the flaw much the same way a pair of glasses correct the vision of a near-sighted person.
W7Q9Y TIL: The US Navy used Xbox 360 controllers to operate the periscopes on submarines based on feedback from junior officers and sailors; the previous controls for the periscope were clunky and real heavy and cost about $38,000 compared to the Xbox 360 controller’s cost of around $20.