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TIL about “ telephoning for catfish” Southern fishers in the 1950s jury-rigged components of old crank-style telephones to send an electric current through the water and stun fish, and it only works on fish with no scales, like catfish.

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OLbL TIL Actor Crispin Glover (from Back to The Future) was in character from an upcoming movie during an bizarre interview with Letterman in 1987 because of this everyone thought he was crazy for years to come, because the movie wasn’t released until 1991.
dNp7 TIL The simple act of a surgical team stopping to answer a set of 19 questions such as “Do we have the right patient?” and “What operation are we performing?” has been proven to reduce deaths by more than 40% and complications by one third.
4kOOJ TIL about Project West Ford, a Cold War project done by MIT on behalf of the US military. It was an attempt to create an artificial ionosphere around the Earth by launching millions of copper needles into orbit.
mx5gy TIL that due to a researcher’s offhand comment about octopus DNA seeming “alien”, many news outlets mistakenly began reporting that cephalopods had actually come from outer space.
ajOo TIL airline pilots in the 1930s and 40s would navigate by listening to a stream of automated “A” and “N” Morse codes when visibility was poor. They would turn the aircraft to the right when hearing an “N” stream, to the left on an “A” stream and fly straight ahead while hearing a steady tone.