› added 12 years ago

190

TIL that Carl Sagan was an avid pot smoker and credits his habit with inspiring essays and scientific insights. Once while showering with his wife, he had a stoned insight, and “wrote the curves in soap on the shower wall” so he would not forget them.

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7rvOb TIL The Hubble Telescope is using Spermaceti (whale oil) to lubricate its parts due to whale oil's capacity to withstand extremely cold temperatures without coagulation.
Rp57 TIL 700 years ago a monk scraped off the ink of old parchment to write a new prayer book. Recent discoveries find that the paper he erased was a manuscript written by Archimedes that laid out the heart of Calculus thousands of years before Newton was even born.
YpxlG TIL that in Iceland, if you want to make your own necropants (nábrók), you have to get permission from a living man to use his skin after his death, flay his lower body after he's buried, then steal a coin from a poor widow and place it in the scrotum. The coin will draw money into the scrotum.
pY48p TIL New Smyrna Beach, located on the east coast of Florida, is considered one of the most dangerous beaches, with more recorded attacks than any other beach in the world. The beach is known for its high number of shark bites incidens.
vPmk4 TIL playing Tetris after a traumatic event can help reduce PTSD symptoms