› added 8 years ago

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TIL: After WW2 the Japanese Admiral who invented the idea of kamikaze pilots committed ritual suicide, seppuku, as an apology. After cutting through his abdomen he refused the customary beheading, instead slowly dying over several hours.

R5aa9 TIL Of the Bre-X fraud. The Canadian mining company was a penny stock that reportedly found billions of dollars of gold in Indonesia. The stock skyrocketed but collapsed following the suicide of one of the geologists and discovery that the core samples were salted.
0d5Mp TIL about Rankine scale, which is a temperature measurement scale made by Macquorn Rankine, to be a Kelvin-equivalent for Fahrenheit. While 0 R degrees is equal to 0 K, water freezes at 491.67 R degrees.
wLr6E TIL That a % chance of rain doesn’t exactly mean there is a specific chance for rain. Rather, it is a formula that considers how confident the meteorologist is and what % of the area is likely to get rain. If a met. is 50% confident that 50% of an area will get rain, the “chance” for rain is 25%.
QJKgM TIL that Finland's reindeer herders wanted to reduce the 4,000 annual reindeer road deaths. They painted antlers in fluorescent colors, hung reflectors around necks, and used movable traffic signs. This failed, so they tried a mobile app for drivers to register sightings and get reindeer warnings.
NXQoE TIL that the word 'eclipse' comes from the Greek word meaning 'abandonment'. This stems from their belief that eclipses were a sign that the gods were angry with humans and the Sun would abandon the Earth, bringing untold misery.