› added 7 years ago

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TIL hawk moths scare off bats by rubbing their genitalia to jam the bat’s sonar

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R7gQQ TIL that the International Space Station ran on a 20MHz Intel 80386SX CPU from 1988 & was upgraded in August with a commercial off-the-shelf computer. The station orbits Earth & sees a sunrise once every 92 minutes. Soon after the upgrade, it will have a computer that can keep up.
9YQmm TIL that Neil Armstrong went to the North Pole with Sir Edmund Hillary (first to climb Mt Everest) and other prominent explorers. He said that he was curious to see it from the ground, since he'd only seen it from space.
0dd9L TIL of the high % of NASA astronauts that were Boy Scouts. Of the 312 selected as astronauts, at least 207 have been active in scouting. Of the 24 to travel to the moon, 20 were scouts, including 11 of the 12 moonwalkers, and all three members of the crew of Apollo 13.
EgoKX TIL that in Anglo-Saxon England between 10 and 30 per cent of the population were slaves. Slave raids on different parts of the British Isles were common. The Medieval French church turned against slavery around 1000 AD and when the Normans invaded in 1066 they slowly ended the practice.
xV0pk TIL; On death row in Malawi, Byson Kaula would not die. Three times by hanging (the hangman was too lazy); And once by suicide after the fact.