› added 4 years ago

84

TIL that early refrigerating systems would use toxic substances like sulphur dioxide, ammonia and methyl chloride as coolants. Methyl chloride was also a gas used during WW1

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9wMBB TIL the Smithsonian Institution in Washington DC displayed a working "Little Boy" Atom Bomb that lacked only uranium until 1986. Then the Department of Energy took the bomb from the museum to remove its inner components, so it could not be stolen and detonated with fissile material.
VBdRQ TIL almost every elites in Atlanta boycotted event honoring MLK's Nobel Prize win. When Coca Cola threatened to move HQ away from Atlanta, 1200 people attended the event.
9YvOX TIL Wolfgang Doeblin, a Jewish-German mathematician fighting for the French during WWII. He committed suicide at 25 after his company was surrounded. A sealed letter he sent to the French Academy of Sciences was opened in 2000, revealing he had already proven a famous result in stochastic calculus.
Z8gpR TIL Velcro is the name brand of Hook and Loop Fastener. It was invented in the 40s by a Swiss engineer and patterned after cockleburrs, burdock seeds that would stick to his pants and in his dog's fur. He looked at them under a microscope and was inspired to recreate it.
RA8a TIL that the inventor of the web, Tim Berners-Lee, has one regret: adding the double slash // to URLs. In retrospect, he says, it was totally unnecessary.