› added 12 years ago

109

TIL that Canada has a more powerful military than North Korea

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XEgG6 TIL that the name "battery" was first used by Benjamin Franklin in his experiments with Leyden Jars (early electrostatic capacitors) and originally only meant "a group of two or more" borrowing the term from artillery batteries.
XEmr TIL: A boomerang will still come back to you in a zero gravity pressurised environment
6EjgQ TIL that when trains were first introduced in the U.S, many people believed that, "women's bodies were not meant to go at 50 miles an hour" and that their "uteruses would fly out of [their] bodies if they were accelerated to that speed"
a8JvM TIL: the US has a law called the Paperwork Reduction Act (PRA) to combat bureaucracy. PRA approvals take 6-9 months
Q5ma TIL that in swimming finishes within 0.01 seconds are considered a tie, because to determine times within 0.001 seconds the length of each lane could differ no more than 1.7mm.