› added 7 months ago

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TIL the 1965 Spiegelman's Monster experiment demonstrated genetic replication and evolution in real-time at the molecular level, showing how natural selection could drive the emergence of more efficient genetic replication, even in an artificial setting.

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a8wnM TIL of Mario Castelnuovo-Tedesco, an Italian composer who was expelled from Italy because he was Jewish and ended up working in the USA for Metro-Goldwin-Mayer and other Hollywood productions
5V0ZR TIL that Windows in Japan has anime-girl mascots called OS-tans. Each of them has the surname of Madobe (窓辺, meaning By the Windowside) and a new one is created for each operating system starting with Windows 7. They have had various tie in products over the years in addition to promoting Windows OS
PYleZ TIL The ancient Greeks had known the world is round since Pythagoras, and successfully calculated the circumference of the globe when Eratosthenes measued the angles of the mid-day sun between two towns of a known distance. His calculation had only about a 10% margin of error.
wmbo TIL that in North Korea there is little stigma attached to using meth. “If you go to somebody’s house it is a polite way to greet somebody by offering them a sniff” said one North Korean.
WlX9 TIL pioneering shock rocker Alice Cooper credits golf with helping him overcome alcohol addiction and plays the game up to six days a week.