› added 9 months ago

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TIL George Carlin’s 1972 “Seven Dirty Words” routine (“shit, piss, fuck, cunt, cocksucker, motherfucker, tits”) led to a 1978 Supreme Court case affirming FCC power to regulate indecent broadcasts. Carlin defended “tits” as too harmless for the list, joking it sounded like a snack food.

yVYEM TIL about a group of proteins called E3 ubiquitin ligases. They recognize misfolded or damaged proteins in the body. The human genome contains over 600 genes responsible for encoding these proteins. The mutation of the E3 ubiquitin ligase called "parkin" causes familial Parkinson's Disease.
mxYrx TIL that several months before Russell Crowe won the Oscar for Gladiator, the FBI warned him that the al-Qaeda were planning to kidnap him as part of a “cultural destabilization plot”. For nearly two years, the FBI guarded Crowe in public and refused to give him any details about the threat.
xV96g TIL: The phrase "[murdered] in cold blood" doesn't refer to someone being cruel. It refers to the killer having had time to think over the crime and still do it in a calculated way. As opposed to doing it in the "heat of passion", their blood had time to cool before they committed the crime.
Brj1k TIL that a helium balloon on the moon, unlike what might feel intuitive, would drop to the ground as if it was heavy.
Wk1P9 TIL ancient swords from 'Damascus' (Syria) dipped in 'Dragon's Blood,' as legend has it, were studied by scientists who further dipped the metal, 'wootz,' in hydrochloric acid to reveal, under an electron-microscope, nano-metre-sized tubes with a microstructure similar to modern carbon nanotubes.