› added 7 years ago

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TIL that during the construction of the Hubble Space Telescope, a chip of paint flecked off a measuring rod and began giving off false readings. The mirror ended up being 4 microns off, resulting in billions of dollars worth of repair efforts.

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oR9W8 TIL of the Iffland-Ring, which is given to the “most significant and most worthy actor of the German-speaking theatre”. It is only passed along when the current holder dies, and the successor must be included in the current holder’s will.
x60kb TIL that the old euphemism for a positive pregnancy test, "the rabbit died", came from a test developed in 1931 wherein the urine from a human female was injected into a rabbit. Soon after, the rabbit was euthanized and dissected to check for the reaction of the hormone hCG in its ovaries.
nQoP TIL that more than 85% of Warsaw’s historic centre was reduced to ruins in the second world war; the city was then reconstructed from the 18th century cityscapes of the Venetian painter Bernardo Bellotto
e0YQ5 TIL in 1974, drinkers in a British pub were bemoaning the fact that the UK didn't produce world champions, so they invented a sport that no one else knew about: toe wrestling. In 1976, a Canadian visitor competed and won, so with the point of the sport gone, the "World Championship" was discontinued
KOyDQ TIL that in ancient Rome, giving fellatio was seen as a disgusting, shameful act, while receiving it wasn't. So sometimes petty crimes were solved by punishing the criminal through forcing him/her to perform fellatio on the victim of the crime, instead of taking the case to court.