› added 7 years ago

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TIL Creationists’ favourite anti-evolutionist challenge to the existence of transitional fossils used to be the lack of transitional forms in the evolution of the whales; until those forms were found.

b6o4N TIL that Ben Franklin's invention of the lightning rod was blamed by church leaders for the 1755 Cape Ann earthquake off the coast of Colonial Massachusetts — as his "heretical rods" interfered with the "artillery of Heaven" & deprived God of using lightning as "tokens of His displeasure."
b95Vj TIL about the Devil's Chair, a graveside bench in the cemetery in Cassadaga, Florida. According to local legend, an unopened beer left on the chair will be empty by morning. The Devil is sometimes said to appear to anyone bold enough to sit in the chair.
KOXvE TIL that the Mythbusters once tested a combination of common materials that made an extremely powerful explosive. They deleted the tapes and swore to never release the information, then contacted DARPA and warned them about the possibility of misuse from the combination.
E1PAV TIL of “Tokyo Rose” aka “Orphan Ann” aka Iva Toguri D'Aquino who in WWII used double entendres to make a farce of Japanese propaganda on her radio show “The Zero Hour” and used part of her $7 a month paycheck to smuggle food to POWs
VMdRp TIL a Cornell University study found that social media "Likes" are less likely to affect the self-esteem of people with a sense of purpose (defined as ongoing motivation that is self-directed, oriented toward the future and beneficial to others).