› added 8 years ago

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TIL that the US Secret Service has an SUV with anti-IED jammers and anti-missile radar in the presidential motorcade. It is believed that if a rocket is detected, infrared smoke grenades are detonated while the president’s driver activates a thermal-imaging driving system to escape.

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nVkG TIL Christopher Lee, when acting the scene in which Saruman is stabbed from behind in The Return of the King, informed Peter Jackson that because he would be stabbed in the lungs, he would not be able to scream. He knew this from his time in the SAS during WWII
7rWVM TIL that Harvard University said it can't afford journal publishers' prices and wants scientists to make their research open access and resign from publications that keep articles behind paywalls
LwRv TIL “Judas” goats helped eradicate invasive goats in the Galápagos Islands. These goats are sterilized, GPS tracked, and given hormones to attract other goats so that armed hunters could kill all the goats from a helicopter, but leave the Judas goats alive so they could be used to find more goats.
4k85R TIL the Solomon Islands were named as such because the explorer who discovered them thought they were the mythical land of Ophir, mentioned in the Bible as where King Solomon acquired his gold
jrAv TIL There are 2270 children serving life without parole in US, in the rest of the world combined the number is 12.