› added 11 months ago

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TIL In 1884, one of the first roller coasters, Switchback Railway in Coney Island, had a top speed of 6mph and cost five cents to ride.

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e0Ogb TIL the gyroids in the Animal Crossing series are based on the Haniwa, terracotta clay figures that were made for ritual use and buried with the dead as funerary objects during the Kofun period (3rd to 6th centuries AD) of the history of Japan
WkYRo TIL that there are 2 ATMs in Antartica and only one of them works at a time. The reason for this is so if the working one breaks down, the other can be cannibalized for parts. A repairman also stops by every 2 years to perform routine maintenance.
GYQ1Q TIL Norman Borlaug is an agronomist responsible for saving over a billion lives from starvation due to his work in creating drought and disease resistant crops.
epnZb TIL the first successful attempt to make a longer acting insulin was accomplished by combining insulin with protamine extracted from trout semen
GAmB7 TIL that Svante Pääbo mapped the DNA of Neanderthals and won the Nobel price. During his attempts, the first DNA sequences obtained came from himself. This helped him understand that contamination was a major problem and allowed him to refine the process and succeed