› added 9 years ago

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TIL in 2011, Firefighters in Tennessee let a house burn down because the homeowners didn’t pay a “$75 fire subscription fee”.

4XEGb TIL cartographers protect their intellectual property by slipping fake streets, or even entire towns, into their maps. If the street/town shows up on another map, they know it was stolen. Dictionary writers have been known to do the same thing with fake words.
DQgWp TIL the record for the longest name ever used was held by a German-American man. The name is so long it can't fit in this title but was abbreviated as Hubert B. Wolfe + 666 Sr. The name has its origins in his Great-Grandfather's sarcastic response to a law mandating German Jews take a second name.
wLOAP When 50,000 of Mark Rober's 3 million YouTube subscribers participated in a basic coding challenge, the data all pointed to what Rober has dubbed the Super Mario Effect. The YouTube star and former NASA engineer describes how this data-backed mindset for life gamification has stuck with him along his journey, and how it impacts the ways he helps (or tricks) his viewers into learning science, engineering, and design. Mark Rober has made a career out of engineering, entertainment, and education. After completing degrees in mechanical engineering from Brigham Young University and the University of Southern California, Rober joined NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in 2004. In his nine years as a NASA engineer, seven of which were on the Mars rover Curiosity team, Rober worked on both the Descent Stage (the jetpack that lowered the Rover to the surface) and some hardware on the Rover top deck for collecting samples. In 2011, Rober’s iPad-based Halloween costume helped launch both his creative costume company, Digital Dudz, and his YouTube channel, which now boasts 3 million subscribers and 400 million views. His videos focus on creative ideas and science- and engineering-based pranks and activities. Rober is a regular guest on "Jimmy Kimmel Live!". Today, he does research and development work for a large technology company in Northern California, where he lives with his wife and son.
XE8dQ TIL that normal matter only makes up 5 percent of the total Universe
Wk019 TIL that in 2014, astronomers discovered an Unusual Supernova that has been continually exploding since the 1950's. No theory exists that explains why this supernova eruption has lasted hundreds of times longer than typical supernovae eruptions, which usually last about 100 days.