› added 9 years ago

55

TIL that every US President is/was related to George Washington, except Gerald Ford.

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Y71yP TIL Ed Catmull, co-founder of Pixar and former president of Walt Disney Animation Studios, who revolutionised 3D graphics, and developed the industry-standard method for animating curved surfaces, has the rare condition Aphantasia, i.e. complete inability to visualise mental images.
neQE9 TIL carrying the bride over the threshold is an ancient Roman custom dating back to the founders of Rome and the "Rape of the Sabine Women" in which the men of Rome abducted 'brides' from Sabine.
vo7B TIL that IBM’s Watson was tested on 1,000 cancer diagnoses made by human experts. In 30% of the cases, Watson found a treatment option the human doctors missed. Some treatments were based on research papers that the doctors had not read. More than 160,000 cancer research papers are published a year.
OonM1 TIL Jon "NEVERDIE" Jacobs mortgaged his home to buy a virtual asteroid for $100,000. In 2005, this was the most valuable virtual item ever sold. This landed him in the Guinness Book of World Records for owning the most expensive virtual item, which he later sold for $635,000.
Z8BXv TIL about George Cassiday, the Man in the Green Hat. During Prohibition, Cassiday supplied alcohol to members of Congress, including those who voted for prohibition in the first place. After ten years, when the story broke, the public's outrage contributed the repeal of the 18th Amendment.