› added 7 years ago

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TIL the reason flags are flown at half-mast when a person dies is to make room for the invisible flag of death

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yeN8 TIL Martin Luther King Jr. Plagiarized His Research Papers, Doctoral Dissertation, and Speeches
Oo1N4 TIL Researchers injected mice on the ISS with a gene treatment aimed to prevent bone and muscle loss (by sticking "decoy" receptors on muscle cells). The rodents didn't just maintain their muscles, they even bulked up, which could have implications for both astronauts and earthbound people alike.
LY9r TIL that in 1567, the man said to have the longest beard in the world died after he tripped over his own beard while running away from a fire.
wmN7 TIL that in 1975, Morgantown, WV (Pop. 30,000) built a personal rapid transit system that comes at the push of a button, skips the stations you don’t want and is still carrying 15,000 people/day today
69ALQ TIL about the Sterile Insect Technique (SIT), the most environmentally friendly form of pest control. Disease carrying insects, including mosquitoes and tsetse flies, are sterilized with radiation and released to mate with wild females, rendering their eggs useless.