› added 4 months ago

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TIL that Longyearbyen is named after John Munro Longyear, an American. He established the first mine in Svalbard in 1906 and established Longyear City.

Read more visitsvalbard.com

via reddit.com

8gZV TIL that one of the primary goals of alchemy - transmuting a base metal into a noble metal - was achieved as early as 1924 when gold was produced by neutron bombardment of mercury.
R7b68 TIL the Hippos from Pablo Escobar's private zoo, at Hacienda Napoles, escaped became feral, bred and now terrorise local fisherman in Columbia.
KOZPG TIL of Albert Hofmann, who synthesized LSD. On 16 April 1943, he accidentally consumed some LSD and discovered its powerful effects. Three days later, he intentionally ingested 0.25 mg of LSD, whose effects he began to feel as he rode home on a bike. This was the first LSD trip.
yQg8V TIL "killer bees" (real name: Africanized bees) are actually a man-made hybrid species created in 1957 when 26 swarms of them escaped quarantine
Bvnk TIL that Yuri Gagarin’s heart was beating at 64 beats per minute just half an hour before the launch that would bring him to space. 64 BPM is lower than the average person’s pulse just after waking up in the morning