› added 3 years ago

94

TIL that the Ebola pandemic that killed more than 2,200 people could have been prevented if it weren’t for paywalls, given that an article published in a subscription-only journal in 1982 had warned of the risk.

Read more theguardian.com

via reddit.com

74vX TIL that Jim Crow-era “Literacy Tests” were frequently not even legitimate tests of reading skills but instead were a series of incredibly confusing trick questions such as “Print the word vote upside down, but in the correct order.”
X9NX TIL The Duke of Edinburgh warned Princess Diana If you don’t behave, my girl, we’ll take your title away.“ to which she replied "My title is a lot older than yours, Philip”.
ADpNd TIL that an Austrian Diplomat writing an antisemitic book about the evilness of Jews came to a different conclusion before it was published, declaring that "antisemitism amounted to nothing more credible than fanatical religious hatred"
69W6J TIL in 1988 a teenager attempted suicide with a gun due to his severe obsessive compulsive disorder but instead the bullet destroyed the part of his brain causing the disorder without damaging his ability to think or learn. After recovery, he finished college which had previously been disrupted..22-
ndGB TIL of Arthur Ganson’s “Machine with Concrete”, a kinetic sculpture of 12 connected gear pairs with the last gear stuck in concrete. It can still turn though, due to gear reduction that cuts the rotational speed by 1/50th for each gear set. The last gear will take over 2 trillion years to turn once.