› added 7 years ago

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TIL that the platypus is one of the only living mammals that can produce and secrete venom.

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0wPx5 TIL 'Hello' as a greeting is credited to Thomas Edison. Hello likely derived from hullo, a expression of surprise, but was seen by Edison as good greeting for telephone conversations. Alexander Graham Bell initially used Ahoy (as used on ships) as a telephone greeting, but it didn't take off.
kO1B7 TIL that Sega hired the mafia to kidnap a game developer’s sister to stop them from working with Nintendo. In response, the developer hired a crane to drop a Sega arcade machine in front of their headquarters and sent them a threatening letter saying that one of their employees would be next.
Jp0B TIL an Australian doctor named Dr Jack Barnes stung himself, his nine year old son, and a local lifeguard with the Irukandji jellyfish to prove it was the then-unknown cause of Irukandji Syndrome. All three developed the syndrome, and the jellyfish was named Carukia barnesi after him.
0dRbj TIL that, on average, half of all service dogs fail their training. Due to this poor rate, South Korea experimented with cloning service dogs that had already passed their training. The resulting clones passed at rates much higher than average.
b9rm4 TIL about "nam man prai" - a necromantic oil made from corpses, preferably of those who died a violent death (murder, car accident etc). These oils can be used for a variety of purposes, including tattoos.