› added 11 years ago

234

TIL that the webcam was invented so that Computer Scientists at Cambridge University could see whether the coffee pot was full or not from different rooms.

Read more bbc.co.uk

via reddit.com

XE7Gk TIL: Jefferson Davis, U.S. Senator and President of the Confederacy, was caught by Union soldiers about a month after Robert E. Lee's surrender to Grant, wearing women's clothes in as desperate attempt to evade capture.
M7Nx0 TIL a volcano caused the creation of Frankenstein. Indonesia's Mt. Tambora erupted in 1815, and the next summer was Europe's coldest on record. Shelley, Byron, & friends were on vacation but had to stay inside, so they came up with scary stories, such as "Frankenstein", and the modern vampire.
GAV9E TIL Gold is so malleable that it can be flattened to .0001 inches thick or three microns. For reference the thickness of a sheet of paper is, on average, about .004 inches.
7rj9Z TIL that a Nature photographer, Kjell Bloch Sandved, curated a collection of butterfly and moth images with interesting patterns on their wings that resembled all 26 letters in the English alphabet, as well as the 10 single-digit numbers.
Wk7x4 TIL the 3 Musketeers bar was originally split into three pieces with three different flavors: vanilla, chocolate and strawberry. When the other flavors became harder to come by during World War II, Mars decided to go all chocolate.