› added 5 years ago

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TIL in 2016 the U.S. health department stopped recommending flossing because it has "no proven benefits"

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66g8 TIL the Samurai wore a cloak that inflated when the wearer was riding a horse, which protected him from incoming arrows from behind.
neEYP TIL that the U.S. state of Minnesota is the longest-reigning subnational body in the US/Canada to not vote conservative in a federal election, longer than all other 49 U.S. states and the 10 provinces of Canada
LknxP TIL the disease malaria gets its name from the Mediaeval Italian words “mala aria,” meaning “bad air”
gx54 TIL that IBM has stated that the Scroll Lock key on your keyboard does nothing. When PC Magazine asked an executive of keyboard manufacturer Key Tronic about the key’s purpose he replied, “I don’t know, but we put it on ours too.”
6EMd8 Hong Kong-based students, Sum Ming Wong and Kin Pong Li designed a door handle that uses light to always keep itself sterilized. The students were inspired by the SARS outbreak in the 2000s and figured that a self-sanitizing door handle is more effective than the chemical-based cleaning processes we are using right now. The handle is made of a glass tube with aluminum caps at each end and the entire handle is covered in a powdered photocatalytic coating made from a mineral called titanium dioxide. The bacteria is decomposed through a chemical reaction that is activated by UV light reacting with the thin coating on the glass tube.