› added 9 years ago

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TIL George Reeves, the actor who played Superman in the 1950s was wary because some fans tried to test his “invulnerability.” At one appearance a young fan pulled a pistol on him. Reeves convinced him to hand over the gun by telling him that a bystander could be hurt when the bullets bounced off

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6ELEY TIL that in 1720 a ship full of precious goods and sick people arrived in Marseille/France. In spite of clear signs, greedy merchands put pressure an the authorities to shorten the quarantine and not to burn the freight. More than 100.000 people died because of pestilence in the next two years.
XEXmP TIL that Guinness drinkers with moustaches are unknowingly wasting an estimated 162,719 pints every year by trapping it in their facial hair
xrdk TIL there us no safe amount of lead exposure at all; the body thinks it’s calcium, so it goes wherever calcium would. It doesn’t get filtered out - it just accumulates.
d8wbj TIL that whenever Queen Elizabeth is talking with someone, she uses her handbag to signal coded messages to her staff to indicate how the conversation is going.
AB9g TIL of Chlorine-trifluoride, a substance so unstable it sets seemingly inflammable objects like concrete on fire. In the 1950’s, some was accidentally spilled in a warehouse and burned through a foot of concrete while simultaneously releasing a deadly cloud of gas that corroded anything it touched.