› added 5 years ago

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TIL German biologist Stefan Lanka, who believed that measles was a "psychosomatic illness", announced that he would pay 100,000 Euros to anyone who could prove that measles was a virus. German doctor David Barden proved him wrong and Lanka was ordered by the court to pay the money as promised.

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via reddit.com

e4Y5 TIL that not a single engineer made it off the Titanic: they stayed and kept the power on so others could escape.
1xvX TIL MIT researches have developed the world’s toughest tongue twister: Pad kid poured curd pulled cold.
QNMrp TIL it took ~400,000 years following the Big Bang for the Universe to cool down enough to allow atoms to form
kJpJB TIL that mathematician John von Neumann had an unusual ability to solve new problems. When presented with a problem in programming on which there had been no published literature, he said "Oh, that!", then gave a lecture of over an hour explaining how to solve it using a hitherto unconceived theory
9y8r TIL that your femur is 65x stronger than concrete and more resilient than steel. It can withstand about a ton of stress before snapping