› added 12 years ago

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TIL Warner Bros studios didn’t like the idea of Jack Nicholson’s character dying in Mars Attacks, so Tim Burton gave Nicholson two different characters and killed both of them.

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Z8ywv TIL of Sybil Ludington—a 16-year-old revolutionary who rode twice the distance Paul Revere did in 1777 to warn people of a British invasion. She navigated 40 miles of rainy terrain at night while avoiding British loyalists and ended up completing her mission before dawn the next day.
4Xdm5 TIL That Leonardo Da Vinci once conducted an experiment to understand the flow of blood through the valves of the heart, by pouring hot wax into one, making a mould of thin glass from the cast, and then pumping water mixed with seeds through it. He saw how a heart actually regulates itself.
X0LEr TIL that shrapnel is named after Lieutenant-General Henry Shrapnel who was a British artillery officer who invented the shrapnel artillery shell.
b9wwp TIL that the nuclear warning systems for both US and Russia aim to detect a nuclear weapons before they hit the target so that a retaliation can be launched before their own weapons are destroyed. The system has given at least 22 false alarms which could have caused a nuclear war.
D1AEP TIL Ryan's Rule is a medical precedent in Queensland where, if a person feels their medical concerns are not being taken seriously, they can request a re-evaluation. This rule came about after a 3 year old child died of a bacterial infection after a hospital doctor declined to perform blood tests.