› added 10 months ago

30

TIL about Soviet Zveno aircraft carrier planes. The converted bombers would carry fighters or dive bombers beyond their operational limitation, and launch them when needed. Despite being based on pre-WWII bombers and going through many configuration changes, they had a very high success rate.

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6EGNX TIL that because oils from cookies can be damaging to puppets, the cookies consumed by the Cookie Monster on Sesame Street are actually rice crackers painted to resemble cookies
xVJoD TIL that "Baby Huey" was a 400lbs Chicago soul singer who died in 1970 at age 26 after releasing a single album. The album later became hugely influential on early hip-hop artists, eventually being sampled on hundreds of tracks over the past ~40 years
dypd TIL: According to a study the 2-repeat allele of the MAOA gene, also known as the warrior gene, is found in 0.5% of White males and 4.7% of African-American males
P1PNe TIL that the British were the first to call the sport "soccer," as a shortening of "association football"
Z8Jko TIL About Empedocles, a Greek philosopher who thought he was a God. In order to prove his divinity, he leapt into Mount Etna to show that he could survive the fire. It is said his bronze sandal was found after it was spat out of the volcano.