› added 9 years ago

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TIL A 20 year old spent six months looking for the person who killed his online character in a virtual knife fight, found him living a few miles away, and stabbed him in the chest.

78VM7 TIL Chinese Qing Emperors had to rise at 4am for his first audience. They had rigid schedules to write comments on local government reports for hours a day, and their only permitted amusements were shows, calligraphy, and painting
Gy6G TIL an experiment sponsored the Quaker Oats corporation fed 73 mentally disabled children radioactive oatmeal in order to track “how nutrients were digested”. The children were told they were joining a science club in exchange for larger portions of food and trips to baseball games.
R5w0j TIL that there was a real-life soldier named Timothy Upham (a la Saving Private Ryan) who served during the War of 1812 and led his regiment to rescue a General Miller
VMxak TIL the outermost region of the Sun’s atmosphere, consisting of plasma (hot ionized gas), is called the “corona.” It has a temperature of approximately two million kelvins and an extremely low density. The corona continually varies in size and shape as it is affected by the Sun’s magnetic field.
9w0JG TIL Kasane Teto, a virtual singer software created on the Japanese textboard 2channel for April Fools' Day, 2008. Initially conceived as a hoax by users who planned to make a fake Vocaloid character, it was eventually developed into a real product. She was introduced as a "diva born from a hoax".