› added 11 years ago

138

TIL The jerking reaction you sometimes experience right before you fall asleep as if you’re falling, is known as a “Hypnic jerk”

Read more bodyodd.nbcnews.com

via reddit.com

0ddeA TIL during the Pascal-B subterranean nuclear test in 1957, a 2000lbs steel plate cap was thrown into the atmosphere at 150,000 miles per hour
Z8AeB TIL Fred Astaire started skateboarding in his 70's, got a lifetime membership to the Nat'l Skateboard Society, and broke his wrist skateboarding at age 78.
b9d14 TIL of Georg Ferdinand Duckwitz, a German diplomat who during WW2 warned Danish Jews of their impending deportation and organised their rescue to Sweden, resulting in 95% of Jewish Danes fleeing successfully.
NBBQ TIL nuclear technician Mordechai Vanunu exposed details of Israel’s nuclear capabilities to British press in 1986. Mossad agents abducted Vanunu from Rome and he was secretly taken to Israel and sentenced to 18 years on charges of treason and espionage following a secret trial.
7r8Br TIL China was the first country in the world to produce steel preceding Europe by over 1000 years but failed to reach an industrial revolution due to the absence of a middle class