› added 9 years ago

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TIL Star Wars blasters in the original trilogy used functional Sterling submachine guns, and had blanks to simulate a muzzle flash and noise.

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lo7jN TIL Shavarsh Karapetyan, a retired Professional Swimmer, saved 20 people that got trapped in frigid, sewage infested waters. His career as a professional swimmer ended after this heroic act due to 2 sided pneumonia and blood contamination that put him in a coma. Now he sells shoes for a living.
6ExvJ TIL: The idea that houseplants purify the air of your home by removing toxins is largely false. They do remove tiny amounts of toxic compounds, but to actually make an impact on air quality you would need approximately 10 plants per square foot in your home
jNBxQ TIL about Dreamweaver, a 2011 project by Gallant Lab at UCB. Participants watched movie clips, and researchers were then able to reconstruct low-resolution videos of what they were viewing using only their brain activity. This could lead to technology enabling us to video record our dreams.
6EgGY TIL the US Navy replaced expensive and clunky periscope controls on submarines with Xbox 360 controllers, which reduced training time from hours to minutes
BgMgy TIL that the software company Niantic, makers of Pokémon GO, was named after a wooden ship that sailed to San Francisco during the gold rush, was ran aground, converted into hotel, burned down and got buried and eventually rediscovered in 1978 during excavations next to the Transamerica Pyramid