› added 4 years ago

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TIL that Danish Physicist Lene Hau lead a team in 2001 that was the first to completely stop a beam of light in its tracks. Later experiments included turning light into matter, and then matter back into light.

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via reddit.com

BpmL TIL in 1958 while widening a road the RAF discovered that a fifteen year-old display mockup of the biggest bomb ever used in WWII was not merely a mockup but was actually a live bomb.
pyJZ TIL that the creators of the Curious George children’s books, Hans and Margret Rey, fled Paris on bikes only hours before it fell to the Nazi’s
kJO1d TIL I learned about Amorphous Globosus. That animals can be born as a literal ball of organs. It’s thought to be a result of twin pregnancy in which one twin does not have enough room in the womb and is absorbed by the other. It’s unable to survive outside the womb due to a lack of working organs.
45Ob TIL in 1987 a West German 19yo teenager flew through Soviet air defences to land a Cessna plane in Red Square.
X0wkD TIL Newsstand sales account for a small percentage of National Geographic magazine’s monthly circulation. It is only available to subscribers now and stopped appearing on newsstands in 2023 as part of cutbacks