› added 7 months ago

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TIL There have been multiple attempts to privatize the National Weather Service and charge for weather data that is currently in the public domain

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7RoP TIL in a 1973 issue of The Amazing Spider-Man, Spider-Man saves his girlfriend, Gwen Stacy, from falling to her death by shooting a web down to catch her… but the sudden deceleration breaks her neck and kills her.
dOrj TIL that the acoustic era (1877 to 1925) gave rise to the expression “put a sock in it”, which commemorates the common practice of placing a sock in the horn of the phonograph to muffle the sound for quieter listening.
VMrOD TIL that silicon transistors in modern computer chips are only 14nm wide, which is 400x smaller than a red blood cell. We are reaching the theoretical minimum size of silicon transistors, at which point quantum mechanics prevents them from working properly.
m10eE TIL There is a community in Japan that is closely tied with the North Korean regime. They operate 60 of their own schools with portraits of the North Korean leaders in every classroom as well as banks and a university.
8eAgL TIL that scientists thought Rhizocophala, a group of parasitic barnacles, were hermaphroditic, as many other barnacles. But then they discovered the "testes" were actually males living inside the females.