› added 7 years ago

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TIL that the discovery of elements 95 and 96 (americium and curium) was first announced by physicist Glenn Seaborg on the children’s radio show Quiz Kids, in response to one of the children asking whether any new elements had been discovered at the Metallurgical Laboratory in Chicago during the war

kR8B TIL that the Ancient Romans would piss on their clothes (or let strangers relieve themselves in a bowl and collect the urine), let it break down into ammonia, mix it with water and stir the mixture with their feet to clean their laundry.
nWDvr TIL Atlanta’s Hartsfield-Jackson airport was the world's first airport to hit 100 million passengers in year, doing so in 2015
KOjG9 TIL a Steelers fan had a heart attack when Jerome Bettis fumbled the ball in the 2005 AFC playoff game against the Colts. He wasn't upset that the Steelers might lose the game, but he was concerned Jerome Bettis' legacy would be tarnished during what would have been his last game ever if they lost.
v1Qx4 TIL Mars Polar Lander(1999) failed because of a bug in the software caused by the fact that the program in question expected the programmer to use the International System of Units (meters, kilograms, ...) in the calculations. However, the programmer had used the American System for calculations.
ANdKx TIL that in 1994, a nutrition researcher published a groundbreaking discovery in diabetes care and named it after herself. Nobody noticed that it was just basic calculus, known for over 2,000 years.