› added 4 years ago

246

TIL astrophysicist Jocelyn Bell Burnell, who as a student discovered pulsars, credits her discovery to impostor syndrome and a fear of being kicked out of college; “I’m a bit of a fighter, so I decided until they threw me out I would work my very hardest". That discovery earned the 1974 Nobel Prize.

Read more theguardian.com

via reddit.com

P1nVO TIL you can have a negative magnitude earthquake. Magnitude calcs are based on logarithmic scale so a ten-fold drop in amplitude decreases the magnitude by 1. If an amplitude of 20 mm as measured on seismic signal corresponds to a magnitude 2 earthquake then 1000 times less (0.02 mm) is mag -1.
Q8wk TIL that George Orwell fought with anarchists in the Spanish Revolution and was shot in the throat.
4XDVg TIL Ghana is considered ‘Africa for beginners’, while its neighbour Nigeria is ‘Africa for the very experienced’, due to its reputation as one of the world’s most difficult places to travel in. Away from the expat suburbs of Lagos, Westerners are a rare sight
67LW TIL Harvey Weinstein, when put in charge of the American release of the Japanese anime “Princess Mononoke”, tried to make significant cuts. In response, a Studio Ghibli producer sent him a real Samurai sword with a simple, stark message attached to the blade: “No cuts”.
9Ar TIL the record holder for most survived lightning strikes, at 7, was struck while operating a truck, inside a ranger station, on two separate occasions after running/driving away from the storm, and immediately after the seventh strike he had to fight off a trout-stealing bear with a tree branch.