› added 8 years ago

68

TIL Star Trek’s Captain Kirk was named for explorer of the Pacific, Captain Cook and that the title of the pilot episode was an homage to one of Cook’s diary entries: “ambition leads me … farther than any other man has been before me”

Read more wikipedia.org

via reddit.com

ZvOQ TIL fragments of porcelain from spark plugs are so effective at breaking windows easily and quietly, that they’re known as ‘Ninja Rocks’ and listed by the State of California as burglary tools.
NgxJ Til that during the Black death in England, physicians would cut pigeons from breast to back, break them open and apply them (while still alive) to the buboes to stop swelling
x6vOb TIL about the Personal Rescue Enclosure or "rescue ball", a 36 inches (91 cm) sphere intended to protect an astronaut in space in case they had to leave the Space Shuttle; another suited astronaut would then carry the sphere. It was developed in the early days of the Shuttle program but never flown.
Y9lB TIL Amazon owns the patent for purchasing things with a single mouse click
rR1Gd TIL A study found that people would rather give themselves electric shocks than sit in the silence of their thoughts