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TIL of Starfish. A 60’s US military experiment designed to see what would happen when a nuke was detonated 250 miles above Earth’s magnetic pole. It resulted in an EMP 900 miles wide, an intense artificial aurora, and a radiation belt that disabled 1/3 of the low orbit satellites and lasted 5 years.

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ne9nb TIL there is a strong positive correlation between the number of films Nicolas Cage appeared in and the number people who drowned by falling into a swimming-pool between 1999 and 2009
4Xwew TIL If funding remained at 1969 Apollo mission levels, NASA planned to develop such elements as a lunar orbit station in 1978, a lunar surface base in 1980, and a manned mission to Mars in 1981 or 1983
ryX0 TIL The US spent $60 billion rebuilding Iraq after the 2003 war. There is virtually nothing to show for the money. Most of the money seems to have been stolen by US defense contractors, and there’s virtually nothing in Iraq to show for the rebuilding effort.
R7rl4 TIL inoculation was introduced to America in 1706 by an West African slave named Onesimus, who taught his owner Cotton Mather how his parents inoculated him as a child. in 1721, Mather used this method to successfully combat a smallpox outbreak in Boston.
oBAlA TIL the word 'assassin' comes from the order of Hashashins, a sect from the middle ages. Young boys were believed to be shown paradise by giving them cannabis (hashish). The leader would ask them to e.g. kill someone, 'so he could get them back to paradise' afterwards. They complied.