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TIL LED brake lights can turn on up to 0.5 seconds faster than incandescent ones. This can increase reaction times by up to one car length at highway speeds.

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ZlvB TIL although “Madison” was the second most popular girl’s name in 2001, it was virtually unheard of before the 1984 movie Splash, where a mermaid adopts it as her human name after seeing a street sign for Madison Avenue. To this Tom Hanks’s character initially protests: “But Madison isn’t a name!”
69L7Y TIL that in 1977, a man named Jerry Ehman discovered a strong narrowband radio signal from outer space while working on the SETI project. Dubbed the "Wow! Signal" for the note he wrote on the printout, it remains one of the best candidates for extraterrestrial communication.
OG8ZL TIL that the last Pharao of Egypt was the Roman Emperor Maximinus Daza who died in the year 313 and co-ruled the Roman Empire with Constantine the Great.
loP4a TIL of Dr. Norman Bethune, a Canadian who served as an army doctor in both the Spanish Civil War and Second Sino-Japanese War and invented the first mobile blood transfusion clinic. He is so beloved in China that his eulogy penned by Mao Zedong is required reading in Chinese textbooks.
e0456 TIL That in 1992, A North Dakotan teen, John Thompson, was home alone when he had both of his arms chopped off by a tractor in a freak farming accident. However, he still managed to get up, go inside, and dial for help via holding a pencil in his mouth. He survived.