› added 5 months ago

142

TIL that the word "robot" comes from the Czech word "robota," meaning forced labor or drudgery, and was first used in the play "R.U.R." (Rossum's Universal Robots) by Karel Čapek in 1920.

Read more britannica.com

via reddit.com

e0AGk TIL that Bhutan is the only Carbon negative country in the world.
xVQMk TIL: Every year the Alpine Swift spends over 200 days in a row, in the air, without landing. How the birds are physiologically able to do it is still a mystery to scientists.
kOOgE TIL Universal Studios bought the E.T. script for $1 million from Columbia Pictures (which held it from Spielberg after putting it in a "turnaround") in exchange for the latter to retain 5% of the film's net profits. Columbia stated it made more money from E.T. than it did any of its films in 1982.
vNxL TIL that there is a surviving fantasy novel written in the 2nd century AD in Roman Syria that features explorers flying to the moon, a first encounter with aliens, interplanetary war between imperialistic celestial kingdoms, and the discovery of a continent across the ocean
P1Qve TIL that the judge from My Cousin Vinny was Herman Munster, Fred Gwynne.