› added 6 months ago

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TIL there was an effort during WWII to train pigeons to guide missiles by strapping them in a harness and using their pecks to navigate. The pigeons were largely successful during closed loop tests with fast response time and high accuracy, but the project never came to fruition due to budget cuts.

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pYJO8 TIL Sun Yat-sen's translator Dai Jitao had a son from an affair who he gave to Chiang Kai-shek for adoption to avoid scandal. The son, christened Chiang Wei-kuo, later led a Panzer division during Anschluss. He was called home to China to fight the Japanese just before Germany invaded Poland.
kO9pE TIL if you had sea monkeys in the 90’s, that purchase helped fund the Aryan Nation purchase themselves telescoping batons!
LvOp TIL: the former Catholic King of the Belgians had himself declared “unable to rule” by the Belgian Government for one day so a law legalizing abortion could be passed without him having to sign it.
X0o7r TIL for charity people do 'Masturbate-A-Thon's?
6En6Y We’ve been conditioned to think of Covid-19 as a respiratory disease—but it’s not just about the lungs. Evidence is emerging that the coronavirus can cause heart damage in people who’ve had mild symptoms or none at all, especially if those people exercise while they’re infected. If you've just had Covid—even if you didn't have symptoms—you need to be aware of myocarditis. That’s cardiologist-speak for what happens when the muscular walls of the heart become inflamed, weakening the organ and making it more difficult for it to pump blood. It’s not a newly discovered condition, and it turns up pretty rarely, but when it does, it’s most often triggered by an infection. Strenuous activity while the heart is weakened can cause swelling in the legs, dizziness, shortness of breath, and—in serious cases—irregular heartbeat, cardiac arrest, and sudden death.