› added 11 months ago

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TIL: A scientist was once lowered in a harness from a helicopter to explore an undiscovered island only to have a polar bear swat at him

Read more landsat.gsfc.nasa.gov

via reddit.com

BgJEr TIL the inventor of Scotch Tape named it that after he was told he was being too "Scotch" with the adhesive. This was a pejorative in use at the time meaning "stingy".
jDDv TIL Robert Recorde invented the symbol ’=’ in 1557 to avoid having to write “is equal to” over and over again.
BrjDe TIL that K2 has no local name: the British Great Trigonometrical Survey of India tried to use local names for mountains where possible, but discovered that K2 was so isolated that no one had a name for it
MeWe7 TIL the band Jefferson Airplane whose arguably most famous song "White Rabbit" was used in the trailer for "The Matrix Resurrection" was formed in 1965 after singer Marty Balin invested in opening a club called "The Matrix".
BJde TIL After hearing that Guinness Book of World Records planned to give him the world record for having filed the highest number of lawsuit, Jonathan Lee Riches (a federal prisoner) did what he does best – he sued them.