› added 1 year ago

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TIL that Gore-Tex is composed of the material commercially know as Teflon. It has tiny perforations that will pass water vapour but not droplets.

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691v7 TIL they make car elevators to make parking easier especially in narrow streets. They cost $55,000 and Harrison Ford, Britney Spears and Mitt Romney all have one.
xVlg0 TIL that the instant noodle was invented during a period of food shortages in Japan following WWII. After the Japanese health ministry supplied the population with wheat flour and asked them to make bread, Momofuku Ando instead decided on making noodles (which were more familiar) that would last.
ArKo TIL babies learn a language by hearing it, but they must hear it spoken directly to them in person by another human being; as little as 12 hours with a human tutor produces dramatic results in babies, compared to no results even after many more hours of exposure to foreign language TV shows.
R9ol TIL that when Bill Robinson, early film megastar and sidekick to Shirley Temple, was asked by a manager to leave a restaurant, he asked to borrow a $10 bill. When the manager agreed, he mixed it up with six $10 bills from his own wallet and said “Here, let’s see you pick out the colored one”.
nOd TIL that the Moriori, the native people of the Chatham Islands, embraced pacifism and lived by a code of passive resistance which led to their demise at the hands of Maori invaders after two influential chiefs decided non-violence was not a strategy for survival but a moral imperative