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TIL Freeman Freeman Dyson was incapable of speaking a dull sentence. For more than 60 years, he was one of the world’s most accomplished living mathematical physicists.By the time he was 29, he had been elected Fellow of the Royal Society.

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LJop TIL that George Orwell was a socialist who saw every line of prose he wrote to be in favour of democratic socialism
yVjQX Today I learned that Thomas Edison was prompted to conduct experiments on animals after SPCA founder Henry Bergh, Jr., contacted him to ask whether electrocution might provide a humane way of killing unwanted animals.
ANy7 TIL Subway was the largest fast food chain on Earth, with 33,749 restaurants worldwide - 1,012 more than McDonald’s.
5YVAn Hot enough to boil oceans and vaporize rock. The highest terrestrial temperatures occurred more than four billion years ago, when a Mars-size proto-planet smashed into the Earth. (The debris from this collision formed our moon.) Within a millennium, the surface air temperature had dropped from a high of about 3,700°F down to 3,000°. Then the planet went into a period of slower cooling that lasted a few tens of millions of years.
9gpX TIL: Martin Luther King Jr’s son met James Earl Ray asking him, “I just want to ask you, for the record, um, did you kill my father?” Ray replied, “No-no I didn’t,” and King tells Ray that he, along with the King family, believed him; the King family urged that Ray be granted a new trial.