› added 7 months ago

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TIL About a turbine bearing at Holtwood Hydroelectric Power Plant in Pennsylvania that has been running maintenance free for over 100 years and rated to continue operating for more than 1300 years without maintenance. Amazing thing is that it was Albert Kingsbury's first practical application.

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69m6Q TIL that the majority of psychological research has been found to have a “WEIRD bias,” meaning that test subjects were from Western, Educated, Industrialized, Rich, and Democratic societies. As much as 96% of data comes from countries with only 12% of the world's population.
R57Oj TIL that during the East German coffee crisis in the 1970s, care packages from the West ended up providing an estimated 25% of all coffee in East Germany. Demand for the fruit bread which was the traditional return gift was so high a minister proposed a ban on gifting it.
Yp7yB TIL the average American will spend $937 (up 3.7%ish from last year) on Christmas, including gifts, food, clothing, and parties... and 98% of them will be doing it on credit.
VBXQ4 TIL Ancient Greeks referred to Subsaharan Africans as Aethiopians, meaning “burnt-face people”. Aethiopia referred to all of the inhabited land found to the south of Egypt. The Greek historian Herodotus stated, “the men are taller, handsomer, and longer lived than anywhere else.”
xWrD TIL the government once forced AT&T, DuPont, and other tech giants to release all their patents. This forced them to compete with smaller companies and sparked technological progress. The policy ended in the Reagan administration.