› added 8 years ago

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TIL cracking your knuckle joints doesn’t give you arthritis. Dr Donald Unger cracked the knuckles on his left hand, twice a day for 50 years but not on his right hand. He proved his mother wrong and received the Ig Nobel Prize for his research

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via ift.tt

BreRb TIL: In Soviet labor camps, prisoners would ingest a condom attached to a length of rubber tubing, fill it up with raw alcohol then smuggle themselves back into the camp. Once there, they would be suspended upside down by the other prisoners and used as a human keg.
xVOKk TIL that red dwarf stars can host life, will live trillions of years, and none have been witnessed as dying since the big bang
gMAND TIL that Japan has over 5 million operating vending machines currently within the country, making it so there is 1 vending machine per 23 people, making it the country with the most vending machines per capita in the entire world.
WkJa4 TIL that after the attack on Pearl Harbor, the U.S. government was worried Japan would invade Hawaii and seize all the U.S. currency there. As a precaution, the U.S. burned $200 million in cash circulating on the islands, and replaced them with freshly printed bills with “Hawaii” stamped on them.
R7QO4 TIL that Jews were fined the equivalent of $7 billion for the events of Kristallnacht, and billed an additional $25M to repair the windows.