› added 7 years ago

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TIL that it is still legal in 19 states to paddle students as a form of punishment.

kJGxW TIL that Irish boxer Steve Collins used a variety of mind games to unnerve and defeat opponent Chris Eubank. These included allegedly having himself hypnotised before the fight and listening to headphones during Eubank’s entrance.
kJwa1 TIL that the T.V. show Archer had to re-name the characters' employer. At the start of the series the characters worked for "the International Secret Intelligence Service" (prominently called I.S.I.S. for short). When the Iraq occupation ended real world events gave the name an unwanted connotation.
jNyWX TIL that the first generations of spy satellites, "Corona" and "Zenith", took photographs, then ejected canisters of photographic film which would descend back down into Earth's atmosphere. Corona capsules were retrieved in mid-air as they floated down on parachutes.
xVpOb TIL of Anatoli Bugorski, who was struck on his face by a proton beam while inspecting a particle accelerator. The beam passed through his brain. He survived and went onto finish his PhD. Half his face is paralyzed, giving one hemisphere of his head a strangely young appearance.
wZXP TIL that vast amount of high-paying engineering disciplines in the US are overwhelmingly dominated by men, while the not-so-lucrative humanity/social/education disciplines are very much dominated by women; this career self-selection is thought to be behind the male-female pay disparity.