› added 10 years ago

1279

TIL Spider Silk is so strong it has been theorized by scientists that a single strand the width of a pencil could stop a Boeing 747 in mid flight

Read more chm.bris.ac.uk

via reddit.com

loLWG TIL Dan Bilzerian once tossed actress Janice Griffith off a roof of a house for a photoshoot for Hustler Magazine. She fell short of the pool, braking her foot. Bilzerian rejected her request for $85k. She sued Hustler and Bilzerian and lost. Hustler's attorney claimed the toss was an "act of God".
o8GW TIL that in 2014 Sony made a cassette tape that could hold 185 terabytes of data or the equivalent of 3,700 Blu-ray discs.
7aRX TIL the US Department of Justice and the National Institute of Justice reported in 2004 that the effects of renewing the 1994 assault weapon ban might be “too small for reliable measurement” because “[assault weapons] were rarely used in gun crimes even before the ban”.
kOJNE TIL In 1979 a stadium hosted Disco Demolition Night. Cost was ¢99 if you brought a disco record. 50,000 people showed up to see them blow up the records in between games. Thousands rushed the field in a frenzy. This is referred to as “The Night Disco Died” and is linked to the decline of the genre
X09e6 TIL, two people next to each will see the Andromeda Galaxy at different times (days apart) if one is walking toward the galaxy and the other is standing still or walking/moving away from it. This is called the Andromeda Paradox.