› added 12 years ago

116

TIL: After the Chernobyl disaster, the soviets held a “May Day” parade to calm the public. The parade was exposed to deadly levels of radiation and all records of the event soon disappeared from the National Archives. The organizer committed suicide.

Read more wikipedia.org

via reddit.com

XEVDj TIL in the 1880s, the Harvard Observatory director was frustrated with his staff, and would say "My Scottish maid could do better!" So, he hired his Scottish maid. Williamina Fleming ran a team for decades, classified tens of thousands of stars, & discovered white dwarfs and the Horsehead Nebula.
QNGGa TIL about the "Infernal Machine", a 25-barreled gun that the Corsican revolutionary Giuseppe Fieschi tried to assassinate King Louis Phillippe I with in 1835. The device killed 18 people in a single volley and injured 22 (as well as Fieschi himself), but only mildly grazed the King.
BgWgk TIL Vitamin B12 and many other compounds such as antibiotics, organic acids, amino acids, polysaccharides, and enzymes are produced via fermentation because synthesis would be too complex
LkG6Z TIL that people with a defective FMO3 secrete TMA into their bodily fluids and thus attain a smell of spoiled fish, a condition designated ‘fish odour syndrome’
1XAD TIL on April 8th, 1999, major US food companies met to discuss the impact of their products on people’s health. A proactive strategy was rejected, as they concluded that reducing salt, sugar and fat for the purpose of public health had the potential to decrease palatability and profitability.