› added 12 years ago

94

TIL that CAPTCHA is an acronym for “Completely Automated Public Turing test to tell Computers and Humans Apart”

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WneX TIL that the Bermuda Land Snail was thought to have gone extinct in the 70s. In 2014, many were rediscovered in a Hamilton city alleyway. The snails had colonized the alley early on and the surrounding city shielded them from the threats that wiped out the rest of the species.
oRddW TIL that in Nazi-occupied Netherlands, you could not be a Catholic AND a Nazi. The same month the Nazis invaded, the Dutch Catholic bishops excommunicated all their Nazis.
7r7N7 TIL in 1817 an English man named Abraham Thornton successfully avoided a murder charge by demanding "trial by battle." It turned out that the practice was still technically allowed under the law despite having not been used for hundreds of years. Parliament finally abolished it one year later.
o5gW TIL morality, empathy, altruism and gratitude have been observed in non-human mammals, suggesting that our own sense of morality comes not from religion or society, but from biology.
ne1bG TIL in the 1960s the US had developed a nuclear bomb small enough to be carried by one person, such as a paratrooper, and placed at an enemy target such as bridge, dam, etc.