› added 7 years ago

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TIL After WW1 devastated land France created a “Zone Rouge” designating uninhabitable areas. 100 years later they still exist and will take 700 years to fully clean.

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neQ4B TIL that Will Sampson had never acted before playing Chief in One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest, the producers were just looking for a tall Native American and chose the 6'7" (2.01 m) Sampson after a car dealer called them and said "the biggest sonofabitch Indian came in the other day!".
O4xX TIL that the oysters in Chesapeake Bay used to be able to filter the entire volume of water in 3 days. This process now takes nearly a year.
Rnrl TIL that the value of a human life as determined by the U.S. government is approx. $6 million
kO9dg TIL the story of Eric Betzig, who conceived the idea for the world's first super-resolution microscope while unemployed after quitting his job at Bell Labs due to being frustrated with the scientific community. He built this microscope in his friend's lounge room, and went on to win the Nobel prize.
6EEbW At peak performance, Summit will perform 200 million billion operations a second and require as much energy as a decent-sized city (12,000 homes!).