› added 10 years ago

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TIL in 1999, Ben Stiller made a pilot starring Jack Black as a former astronaut. He was exposed to inappropriate levels of solar energy, giving him superintelligence. And Owen Wilson played Heat Vision, a talking motorcycle.

v1rVB TIL about Hanoi Hannah, a Vietnamese radio personality who read the names of GIs that were KIA directly from the Stars and Stripes newspaper, and played popular anti-war songs to incite homesickness, attempting to persuade US GIs to go home during the Vietnam War.
4X6pb TIL that in 1986, the American Physical Society held a conference in Las Vegas. Most of the 4000 physicists didn't play at the casinos, resulting in the city's worst week ever, and the organization being asked by the city to never return.
gvwb TIL There was a ten foot tall ape called Gigantopithecus that is now thought to be extinct. The fossil record also indicates that they most likely buried their dead, which indicates a cognitive level that only one other ape possesses.
oRZ6o TIL the brain of a five-year-old child uses 50% of their body’s energy expenditure, rising to 2/3 while resting, which leads to a decline in rate of weight gain. The rate of energy needed for brain development then declines with age and the rate of weight gain resumes in parallel with the brain
9Y9Wp TIL that "Moon Trees" exist. They are the product of around 500 different seed types that were flown up to the moon and back aboard the Apollo 14 mission, then planted at various locations in the US and abroad.