› added 6 years ago

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TIL David Bowie, fuelled by an "astronomic" cocaine habit and subsisting on a diet of peppers and milk, spent much of 1975–76 "in a state of psychic terror."

x6pg5 TIL - Napoleons great grand niece helped Sigmund Freud escape from the Nazis in Vienna. Pincess Marie Bonaparte knew Sigmund because she had previously consulted him for her failure to have orgasms during missionary position intercourse.
b9ENE TIL there's an award called the 'Bad Sex in Fiction' award. The aim of the award is "to draw attention to the crude, tasteless, often perfunctory use of redundant passages of sexual description in the modern novel, and to discourage it".
jN6KR You probably know that your visual perception of the world is a bit different than your pets’. Dogs see things with less color than humans, snakes can see infrared, and if you have a pet bull, it lives in a world where red and green are the same color. This brings up a good question. Why do you have a pet bull? You should get a cat instead, and when you do, it is important to know that your new friend can’t focus on objects farther than 20 feet away. The point is, animals have evolved to see in a variety of ways. But how can we see things through their eyes? Marine biologist and National Geographic Emerging Explorer David Gruber collaborated with a research team to develop lights and camera filters that allowed him to do just that, underwater. Through their work, the team discovered biofluorescence in an abundance of aquatic species. This “glowing” trait has to do with how an organism absorbs and emits light. Research has indicated that this radiance is possibly used for communication and camouflage. One caveat: You need a certain species of eyes (or David’s camera) to see it. Swell sharks (Cephaloscyllium ventriosum) have fluorescent proteins inside their skin, which are triggered by the ocean’s blue light, becoming visible to other swell sharks. David’s camera has special yellow filters that allow the simulation of a swell shark’s vision. It turns out there is a massive rave going on 500 meters below the ocean’s surface, and one of the glowing guests is a type of cat shark!
xbP0 TIL North Korea has enormous deposits of rare earth metals
ZpgXB TIL "The wondering whore" wa the first guide book about the city's prostitutes that circulated in London beginning in 1661. Even through it was actually a guide, it was written as if it was meant to instruct the "law abiding citizens" how to avoid the prostitutes