› added 1 year ago

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TIL Illinois holds about 1/8 of all nuclear waste in the USA, by far the most for a state, about 10k tons.

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via reddit.com

4k8dR TIL that in the early days of crossword puzzles, the game became an object of cultural hysteria. Newspapers and magazines from the 1920's - 1930's warned of a “crossword craze” gripping the country’s minds. The trend was described as an “epidemic,” a “virulent plague,” and a “national menace.”
15PV TIL: John Adams defended the Redcoats Involved in the Boston Massacre despite the inclinations of the mob: famously saying, “Prisoners must be judged solely based upon the evidence produced against them in court and nothing else”
yDv TIL that during the 1950’s Tour de France, one cyclist named Abdel-Kader Zaaf who was in 1st place drank two bottles of wine, took a nap and resumed the race, in the wrong direction (and lost).
b6Ml7 TIL the 1965 Spiegelman's Monster experiment demonstrated genetic replication and evolution in real-time at the molecular level, showing how natural selection could drive the emergence of more efficient genetic replication, even in an artificial setting.
NOwe TIL NASA has a detailed set of written procedures for dealing with a suicidal or psychotic astronaut in space. The astronaut’s crewmates should bind his wrists and ankles with duct tape, tie him down with a bungee cord and inject him with tranquilizers if necessary.