› added 11 years ago

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TIL that the trajectory of the first American manned spaceflight was calculated by an African-American woman. She was so good at computations that she was asked to check the work of the computers when they were first used by NASA to calculate John Glenn’s flight path.

Bmmy TIL: Research from Moscow State University & the University of Iowa discovered that crows exhibit strong behavioral signs of analogical reasoning—the ability to solve puzzles like “bird is to air as fish is to what?” Analogical reasoning only develops in humans between the ages of three & four.
GYg87 TIL that SETI scientists believed that the chances for finding intelligent extraterrestrial life were far greater than initially expected, since Earth developed two intelligent species - humans, and dolphins.
yQEnV TIL Teeth are only able to experience one sensation, that being pain. When you eat or drink something too hot or too cold, or a dentist operates on your teeth, you will only experience pain because that is the only thing the nerves around your teeth respond to.
b9PQN TIL Johnny Knoxville turned down a spot on SNL. SNL saw a demo tape of his show Jackass and offered him a spot on the show. However, he turned it down "because he wanted to work with his friends and have full control of his work."
MeJ50 TIL A Washington man sued his local sheriff’s department for violating his Fourth Amendment right against unlawful search and seizure after they searched his house thinking it was robbed, found out it was the wrong one, then told him he was lucky he wasn’t shot.