› added 11 years ago

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TIL the Malaysian space agency convened a conference of 150 Islamic scientists to determine how a Muslim astronaut on the space station should pray facing Mecca

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m1dax TIL Robert Iger personally worked on Shanghai Disney for 17 years and experienced every show and ride multiple times before it opened. He was asked by Michael Eisner in 1999 to start discussions with the Chinese government and he picked to build it in Shanghai
XEQ96 TIL the oldest and at one point most influential British merchant bank was destroyed in 1995 when an employee made a safe bet that stocks on the Tokyo Stock Exchange wouldn't drop, one day before the Kobe Earthquake.
VBGN8 TIL that leopard slugs have penises on their heads. They're hermaphroditic, and mate by hanging from a mucus rope and entwining their bodies counter-clockwise, and exchange sperm from the penises on their heads.
g7Ob TIL that Thomas Jefferson proposed a bill that punished male rapists with castration.
OGa8e TIL: In 1903 Daniel Barringer gambled his entire fortune on a mineshaft believing geologists had misclassified a meteor creator as a volcano and a $1 billion iron ore deposit was to be found. He was correct that the site was a meteor creator, but didn't realize the iron ore had vaporized on impact.