› added 11 years ago

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TIL: There is a game called Desert Bus. The objective of the game is to drive a bus from Tucson, Arizona to Las Vegas, Nevada in real time at a maximum speed of 45mph. The feat requires 8 hours of continuous play to complete, since the game cannot be paused.

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awKk9 TIL that in 1843, when Oliver Wendell Holmes Sr. correctly concluded that "childbed fever" was transmitted between patients by germs on doctors' hands, he was ridiculed. Sir Frederick Treves compared a doctor washing his hands to an executioner manicuring his nails before an execution.
VBY50 TIL During production of The Godfather, James Caan was known to hang out with Carmine Persico, aka "The Snake", a notorious mafioso and later head of the Colombo crime family. Government agents briefly mistook Caan, who was relatively unknown at the time, as an aspiring mobster.
6EmDZ TIL that Ishi is known as the “last wild Indian” in America. He lived most of his life outside modern culture after his tribe, the Yahi (of the Yana group) became extinct in the late 1800s because of the California Gold Rush. He lived alone in the wilderness after his family died.
4dL5 TIL there is something called “the small penis rule” that authors use to avoid libel lawsuits: if a character is described as having a small penis, no one will want to sue and say the character is based on them.
xKOb TIL an Oregon woman called 911 to report that a man, wanted by police, was breaking into her house. The dispatcher told her that due to budget cuts the police could not respond. The man eventually broke in and raped her. The police were not obligated to protect her. Warren v. District of Columbia