Post * XbK8 — Curious Curator

› added 9 years ago

378

TIL famous mathematician & scientist Blaise Pascal converted to Catholicism after having a 2-hour mystical experience. He spent the rest of his life mostly writing about theology and apologetics.

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loKg5 TIL that in 1982, the comic strip The Far Side jokingly referred to the set of spikes on a Stegosaurus's tail as a "thagomizer". A paleontologist who read the comic realized there wasn't any official name for the spikes and began using the new word; Thagomizer is now the generally accepted term.

5Yk7r TIL John Steinbeck, author of such classics as Of Mice and Men, once wrote a werewolf murder mystery novel titled, Murder at Full Moon. It was never published.

R5804 TIL that I've been calling everything an ACRONYM when in fact they could instead be an INITIALISM. An acronym can be spoken like a word e.g. FIFA, NASA, RAM, where as an initialism cannot be easily spoken as a word e.g. FBI, CIA, UFO, HSBC, and are instead pronounced letter by letter.

Aa4B TIL people who are uninterested in religious debate about god(s) existence and that any debate is useless are called apatheists

QJ5o6 TIL of Sidney Lewis who joined the British Army at age 12, fought in the Battle of the Somme at age 13 but was sent home when his mother complained. He reenlisted without her knowledge, fought in Austria in 1918, and went on to fight in WWII, too, before retiring to run a pub.