› added 11 years ago

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TIL that the “cost per GFLOPS” (the cost for a computer that would operate at one billion floating-point operations per second) in 1997 was of USD $42,000, while nowadays it is of merely $0.12.

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VMXyZ TIL that Hugh Jackman worked as a birthday clown named 'Coco' and made just 50 bucks. Jackman admits that he had no magic tricks and was even told off by a 6 year old that he is terrible.
Ypwgd TIL the Darien Scheme in 1698 was Scotland’s sole attempt at colonization. The effort failed but cost £400k (£71m inflation-adjusted) – about 20% of the nation’s capital. It crippled Scotland’s economy and was a major factor in its Act of Union with England in 1707, thus forming the United Kingdom.
9wOVm TIL that there is an Ancient Egyptian text from around 1000 BCE titled "The Immortality of Writers," including the quote "Man decays, his corpse is dust. All his kin have perished; But a book makes him remembered through the mouth of its reciter."
rRNZM TIL in 1997 Vladimir Markov, a tiger poacher managed to shoot and wound a tiger and steal it's recent kill, but the tiger escaped. The tiger later found Markov's hunting cabin. He wasn't home, so the tiger tore the place up and waited. When Markov came home he was attacked and killed, but not eaten.
a8wV9 TIL of "Antiaris toxicaria", also known as the "Upas", a tree whose latex is so toxic it is used to poison the tips of blowdarts and arrows in Southeast Asian cultures. It has sometimes been regarded as the most poisonous tree in the world.