› added 4 years ago

69

TIL More people lived in Manhattan in the early 1900s than live there today.

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K1BR TIL the US were working on a nuclear cruise missile capable of staying multiple YEARS in the air by pushing air through an open nuclear reactor, heating said air, meanwhile spewing radioactivity everywhere, they even had a working engine, but they abandoned it, deeming it too provocative.
LpWm TIL That the U.S. Military used (and may still use) the “Meow Mix” commercial theme song as a torture device in some prisons, by playing it loud and on repeat.
dMQ9 TIL the world’s quietest place can allow you to hear your internal organs and can produce hallucinations within 30 minutes
6m5Q TIL the Portuguese Man-of-War is not a single creature, but a colony of four smaller organisms that attach to each other and cannot survive independently
X0oyX TIL of Tom Major Ball a circus performer who is listed as an inspiration for David Bowie’s “Major Tom”. Ball had numerous illegitimate children, had an affair with a co-star who later died on stage, sold garden gnomes as a business and in his 60’s, fathered future UK prime minister John Major.