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TIL Aaron Greenspan, a tech wizard who shared the same dorm with Mark Zuckerberg, built a Facebook-y site long before Facebook was built, but was (allegedly) given no credit when he claims (with documented proof) that Zuckerberg took inspiration from and copied off his product to build Facebook.

Read more nytimes.com

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yVlya TIL that 1 million seconds equals about 12 days, while 1 billion seconds equals almost 32 years. Likewise, a million dollars in $100 bills weighs around 22 lbs, while a billion in $100 bills weighs about 22 tons.
4XDw6 TIL: In 2000, an Australian man, after having his job application rejected, managed to hack into the local government's waste management system using a computer and radio, flooding parks, rivers, and the lawn of a hotel with raw sewage.
JR7k TIL it isn’t the first time a Mayan calender has ended. In fact it has happened on September 18, 1618, after which a new calender began.
PYXLe TIL of autistic savant Mark DeFriest, aka Houdini of FL. Arrested on a minor charge as a teen, he got a life sentence from escapes/attempts & pranks. He made a zip gun from a toothpaste tube, replicated keys from memory. In & out of prison since 1978, 27 yrs in solitary; he's in prison to this day.
p8ag8 TIL while playing fetch with dogs, if you throw the ball into water, the dog will run along the beach a while before jumping in, a technique to minimize retrieval time since they're faster on land. You can use calculus to calculate the optimal jumping point, which the dogs can find instinctively.