› added 9 months ago

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TIL That Tom Major Ball, the Father of former UK Prime Minister John Major, was a Circus performer.

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rNnEW TIL about SN 1006, a supernova in the year 1006 CE that was described by observers on multiple continents, some 600 years before the first telescope. It was visible in the daytime sky for weeks, and the gamma rays it emitted created a sedimentary record on Earth. We have images of its remnants.
m1ndO TIL Humans can’t walk in a straight line without looking at something. If blindfolded, we gradually walk in a circle. It seems like our brain needs a reference point to stay on track!
gEKL TIL Henry Ford once balked at paying $10,000 to General Electric for work done troubleshooting a generator, and asked for an itemized bill. The engineer who performed the work, Charles Steinmetz, sent this: “Making chalk mark on generator, $1. Knowing where to make mark, $9,999.” Ford paid the bill.
XEVkk TIL that 21 detached human feet have been found in the Salish Sea (near Vancouver and Seattle) between 2007 and 2019. The odds of finding just two dismembered feet in the same location is a million to one. No one definitively knows what caused this phenomenon.
GYOn7 TIL Mikhail Gorbachev’s “debut album” of romantic ballads was sold at auction in 2009 for £100,000 to fund research by his late wife’s foundation into childhood cancer. All of the songs, which Gorbachev sang himself, were favorites of his wife’s.