› added 2 years ago

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TIL that, during his confirmation hearings in 1888, there was a debate in American newspapers over whether or not Chief Justice Melville W. Fuller's mustache was proper for an official. Some even claimed that it would distract attorneys.

ADJEg TIL: That the majority of bees dance to communicate with each other the location of sweet nectar. Yet there is a significant minority of bees that ignore the dance instructions and choose to explore their own paths. These contrarian bees are better at finding food than those that follow the crowd!
GYXJG TIL that before Hunter S. Thompson committed suicide, he helped free a Colorado woman who was convicted of murder despite her being handcuffed in the back of a police car at the time. She would have served a life sentence without parole and was freed just one month after his death.
J1Oxv TIL that while studying for his American naturalization test, mathematician Kurt Gödel discovered a contradiction in the U.S. Constitution that could theoretically lead from a democracy to a dictatorship via a loophole in how amendment's are made.
oRZgK TIL - That the US has 34 metric tons of plutonium bomb cores left over from the Cold War that are being kept at the Pantex Plant in Amarillo, Texas.
PmVJ TIL that Manhattan Project mathematician Richard Hamming was asked to check arithmetic by a fellow researcher. Richard Hamming planned to give it to a subordinate until he realized it was a set of calculations to see if the nuclear detonation would ignite the entire Earth’s atmosphere.