› added 11 years ago

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TIL that the NES gun used in duck hunt worked by you pulling the trigger, making the screen flash, surrounding the ducks (targets) in white and the diode in the gun begin reception. The photodiode in the gun detects the change in light intensity and tells the computer that it’s pointed at a target.

4Xj7b TIL of Gonzalo Guerrero, a Spanish soldier shipwrecked in Mexico and taken captive by local Maya. By the time Cortés arrived, he had become a Maya war captain, was married to his Lord's daughter, and fathered the first Mestizo children. He led local Maya resistance until his death in 1532.
ADwEn TIL In Jurassic park (1993), the insect trapped in amber and which made the cloning of dinosaur possible was actually elephant mosquito. It's the only mosquito that doesn't suck blood, so cloning wasn't actually possible.
nD59 TIL of Kim Ung-Yong, a South Korean man who was a guest student at a university at the age of 3, was invited by NASA to conduct research at 8, and earned a PhD in Civil Engineering at 15. He also has the highest IQ ever recorded in history.
1jND TIL when the USS West Virginia was raised following the attack on Pearl Harbor, the bodies of three men were discovered in a sealed compartment, along with a calendar on which they’d marked off 16 days.
165Ed TIL that Davy Crockett wasn't just a person known for the Alamo but also the name for a nuclear recoilless gun capable of launching a nuclear round with a yield of 0.02 kilotonnes.