Post * PADV — Curious Curator

› added 10 years ago

69

TIL that in 1928 Nikola Tesla patented a concept aircraft (without propellers or wings) that could vertically take-off and land, as he thought “aeroplanes” of the time were unstable and not commercially viable.

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e0JD4 TIL The US is the global epicenter of tornado formation with an average of 1,200 each year. It’s the result of a unique geography that allows hot, dry air from the Southwest to flow atop moist, warm, unstable surface air east of the Rockies, with cold air at the jet-stream level overtopping it all

WK9N TIL that to produce black widow spider antivenom, horses are injected with black widow spider venom, then bled and antibodies are extracted.

neWlW TIL in the 1863 New York City Draft Riots, a mob that was going to loot the New York Times' building was held back by NYTimes staff manning Gatling guns, including the paper's founder

ANRZl TIL about how psilocybin resets neural networks, essentially ‘rebooting’ your brain’s connections when on shrooms.

R7l07 TIL that in 1924, H. P. Lovecraft was hired to ghostwrite a story for Harry Houdini about Houdini's supposedly true escape from an Egyptian cult. Lovecraft lost the only copy on the way to his own wedding, and spent much of his honeymoon rewriting it with his wife's help.