› added 4 months ago

22

TIL that in 1931, New Zealand farmers accidentally made their pants flammable by treating them with insect repellent, causing spontaneous combustion!

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8ajPV TIL that Robert Ballard's discovery of the Titanic in 1985 was actually a by product. The expedition which found the wreck was funded by the US government to study the effects of radiation from two US Navy submarines which had sunk in the 1960s. The Titanic search was a cover.
nvY7 TIL that Scrubs episode where Dr. Cox lost all his transplant patients to rabies was based on a real event. [pdf]
XEelE TIL That John Chrysostomos is one of the people responsible for interpreting Sodom as a place of sodomy, instead of just a place of inhospitatality, which was the traditional interpretation before him.
rREEd TIL there is a mathematical "game" called the homicidal chauffer problem, in which a driver in a fast but slow-turning car tries to run over a slower pedestrian who has more freedom of motion. It is used to improve missile guidance systems.
jGEN TIL the 2008 film ‘Rambo’ provided a huge morale boost to the Karen Freedom Fighters in Burma, who even adopted dialogue from the movie (most notably “Live for nothing, or die for something”) as rallying points and battle cries.