› added 1 month ago

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TIL in 2016 a man in China who took a selfie with a walrus was killed by the animal afterward, when it dragged him into water & held him under. Spectators & zoo staff thought it was just "playful behavior" at first. Eventually its trainer jumped in to help, but it killed him too by holding him under

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via reddit.com

MrZ7 TIL there is a type of hysteria that affects people living in the Arctic, called pibloktoq. The affected person usually shouts unintelligibly, tears off their clothes and runs around naked – despite frigid temperatures – before collapsing, sleeping, and then recovering.
oBZmY You obviously can’t see it when you gaze up at the night sky, but Earth has a whole lot of junk floating around in orbit. There are all kinds of reasons why debris ends up orbiting Earth and many of the objects are discarded pieces of other spacecraft or long-dead satellites which have no use to anyone. Sometimes these objects crash into each other and create even more, smaller pieces of space junk which can damage active satellites and even pose a danger to astronauts.
ne1bG TIL in the 1960s the US had developed a nuclear bomb small enough to be carried by one person, such as a paratrooper, and placed at an enemy target such as bridge, dam, etc.
nWpAd TIL Tweezers are known to have been used in predynastic Egypt. There are drawings of Egyptian craftsmen holding hot pots over ovens with a double-bow shaped tool.
YwRr TIL Processed meat has been classified as a ‘definite’ cause of cancer (or Group 1 carcinogen) – the same group that includes smoking and alcohol because the “IARC isn’t in the business of telling us how potent something is in causing cancer – only whether it does so or not”.