› added 12 years ago

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TIL that when Charles Whitman began his shooting rampage at U Texas in 1966, a lot of locals grabbed their rifles and started shooting back. They kept him pinned down until the police could sneak up the tower and kill him.

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LQVr0 TIL the greatest temperature variation in 24-hour period was 57.2°C (103°F), in Loma, Montana. Over the course of the day, the town experienced a rise from -47.7°C (-54°F) to 9.4°C (49°F).
xVklk TIL of the Shirky Principle: "Institutions will try to preserve the problem to which they are the solution."
oBX9r TIL that from 1908 until 1940 you could mail-order a build your own house kit from the Sears Catalog. A great many of them still exist today.
ngRW TIL: When identical twins reproduce with identical twins the resulting children are genetically indistinguishable from full siblings
wp6Y TIL Carl Sagan has a number named after him. Sagan’s number is approximately 300 sextellion and refers to the number of stars in the universe.