› added 4 years ago

95

TIL Writer Ruth Prawer Jhabvala is the only person to have won both a Booker Prize and an Oscar. Readers initially assumed Jhabvala to be Indian because of her portrayals of the nuances of Indian lifestyles. Later, the revelation of her true identity led to falling sales of her books in India

wLRgP TIL about a mutation in the ADRB1 gene that affects sleep. People who inherited one copy of this mutant gene had a shortened sleep cycle, sometimes requiring only 4.5 hours of sleep per night.
VMJB8 Til that The first sunglasses date back to the prehistoric Inuits, who wore a piece of flattened ivory over their eyes (made from walrus bones) with narrow slits to look through that blocked harmful rays of the sun reflecting off the ice.
d8kAB TIL that being awake for 18 hours straight makes you drive like you have a blood alcohol level (BAC) of .05. Being awake for 24 hours is like you have a BAC of .1 (for reference, a BAC of .08 is considered drunk)
0dXd5 TIL Rhode Island, despite being the first colony to renounce the British Crown, never sent representatives to draft the Constitution and was the last of the thirteen colonies to ratify the Constitution.
rRyA1 TIL On an episode of Press Your Luck, all 3 contestants answered Sylvester uses catchphrase “sufferin’ succotash!” Host corrected them that it’s actually Daffy Duck that uses the catch phrase. Mel Blanc, the voice of most looney tunes, called the show as the voices and corrected him.