› added 5 years ago

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TIL of Stephen Wiltshire, an autistic British artist who can draw a landscape from memory after seeing it just once. He can draw entire cities from memory, after just a single, short, helicopter ride. When he drew Rome, he drew the exact number of columns in the Pantheon

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bZx0 TIL nukes can have their yield ‘dialed’ or adjusted up or down, from city-buster to tiny puff of single kiloton smoke, while in the silo or even in flight.
neojY TIL that the Chi-Chi's restaurant chain was hit with the largest hepatitis A outbreak in U.S. history, with at least four deaths and 660 other victims a month after filing for bankruptcy
Qg96 TIL that Arnold Sommerfield, a theoretical physicist, was doctoral supervisor to 4 physicists who went on to win Nobel Prizes in physics, and academic supervisor to 2 others who also won. He himself was nominated 81 times.
gMQlA TIL about Vivien Thomas, a black lab technician, who, in the 30s through the 60s, helped his surgeon partner invent heart surgery.
000N TIL of William Cavendish-Scott-Bentinck, who was so incredibly introverted that none of his hundreds of employees were even allowed to acknowledge him. He once fired a worker for raising his hat at him.