› added 5 years ago

77

TIL that Sony only released the original Playstation because Nintendo severed their partnership to build a gaming system with a CD drive.

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167xD TIL there is a specific word - Haar - for the sea fogs that form off of eastern Scotland and England.
oRPRW TIL since Canada’s founding in 1867, fewer than 50 people have been killed in earthquakes on the land now contained within the country’s borders
5YV1Q TIL that part of the reason fighter pilots usually don't pass out under intense G-forces is because of their G-suit. Under intense force, the suit squeezes the legs extremely hard to prevent as much blood as possible from leaving the head, allowing some pilots to go up to 9 g's without passing out
mwGp TIL in 1998, a group of hackers – identified only by their “hacker names”, including “Kingpin”, “Mudge”, and “Space Rogue” – testified before a U.S. Senate committee. They described how they could take make the internet “unusable for the entire nation” with “just a few packets”.
yQZ5p TIL that pounds are abbreviated to "lbs" because it is derived from the ancient Roman unit of measure "libra pondo", meaning "a pound by weight". "Pounds" came from the "pondo" part while "lbs" is an abbreviation of the "libra" part.