› added 11 years ago

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TIL that, on a goodwill visit to China, astronaut Jack Lousma showed a slide of “a beautiful, emerald-colored lake” he’d taken on the Shuttle, and got a surprising reaction. His interpreter explained later that it may have been a secret nuclear test site.

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via reddit.com

NXLYe TIL near the end of her life, Ada Lovelace had a religious transformation and began to repent the conduct of her life. After confessing something to her husband 3 months before her death, he abandoned her bedside. It is not known what she told him.
7G9M TIL Harvard researchers were able to store 700 terabytes of data on a single gram of DNA.
QJ8dX TIL the shape of chainsaw teeth are based on the mandibles of wood-boring beetle larvae.
YAWW TIL NASA has developed a technology called FINDER used to detect breathing or heartbeats through up to 30 feet of rubble, or 20 feet of solid concrete, and was used to save lives during the 2015 Napal earthquakes.
pwke TIL that round goldfish bowls are banned in Monza (Italy), because ‘a fish kept in a bowl has a distorted view of reality’.