› added 4 years ago

74

TIL that there's a parody of the Nobel Prizes, the Ig Nobel Prizes, that every year awards ten real achievements that "first make people laugh, and then make them think"

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6v9Z TIL that a Russian serial killer who is also an outstanding chess player has said his aim was to kill 64 people, the number of squares on a chessboard. He later recanted this statement, saying that he would have continued killing indefinitely if he had not been stopped.
DDAr TIL that Garrett Hardin, author of “The Tragedy of the Commons” later acknowledged that having resources shared in common did not inevitably end badly, and that he should have titled his essay “The Tragedy of the Unmanaged Commons”
Vo7m TIL that despite his years at the BBC, despite countless one-man broadcasts and dozens of panel discussions, no record of George Orwell’s voice survives
epAPb TIL that figure skating and ice hockey were featured events at the 1920 Summer Olympics. At the 1921 Olympic Congress though, it was decided that a Winter Olympics would be created for these events and for snow and ice sports which would have been logistically impossible to hold during the summer.
d85E8 TIL Sony released a camera in 1998 that could see through people's clothes. It included an infrared powered night mode that consumers realized could turn dark fabric and swimsuits transparent. Sony sold 700k "x-ray cameras" before fixing the issue in manufacturing.