› added 11 months ago

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TIL the Solar System is much, much larger than I thought; Pluto is located at 39 Astronomical Units from the sun, while the Oort cloud, formed by billions or even trillions of asteroids, starts at around 2 to 5 thousand AUs from the sun and ends at around 10 to 100 thousand.

Read more science.nasa.gov

via reddit.com

KYM7Q TIL Between 1921 and 1932 three Japanese Prime Ministers were assassinated by Rightwing members of Japanese society
X0E9j TIL the most distant individual star we've ever seen, Earendel, was detected because of a chance alignment of the Hubble telescopes instruments and a huge galaxy cluster that warped space and acted as a gravitational lens.
87M4 TIL: Before WWII, skim milk, as a byproduct of the butter making process, was either thrown out or used to fatten pigs up. Shortly thereafter, it was marketed as a weightloss food to people.
wGa7 TIL that the pledge of allegiance in schools was conceived by a businessman who wanted to sell flags.
5YZgp TIL In 1940 9,169 British people were killed in road traffic accidents during the wartime blackout. One person died that year for every 200 vehicles on the road; today the figure is one for every 20,000.