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1690

TIL that in 1949, a member of the New Zealand parliament was deemed to have used “unparliamentary language” for saying of another member that “his brains could revolve inside a peanut shell for a thousand years without touching the sides.”

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via ift.tt

W77lN TIL slime molds are problem solvers, scooting around on pseudopods before ballooning to release their spores. They can find the shortest path through a maze, and they inspired a slime-mold algorithm that researchers used to map filaments of dark matter connecting galaxies in the universe.
XO5k TIL there was a service dog named Endal, who, in 2001, rescued his unconscious owner by putting him in the recovery position, covering him with a blanket, retrieving his mobile phone, and running to a nearby hotel to obtain help after his wheelchair was clipped by a vehicle.
oy5o TIL that Iceland let its banks fail instead of bailing them out. In 2008, the country started over from square one after paying off loans for consumers, forgiving homeowner debt, and throwing the offenders responsible in prison. Its economy is now growing faster than the US and European economies.
Y7jl7 TIL by the year 2100, the human race will have lost about half of the languages in use today. Every fourteen days a language dies. For native speakers of Navajo, Southwestern Ojibwa, Ohlone or Aragonese, losing their language means losing cultural heritage and history.
wnj6 TIL Michael Cain was in “Jaws The Revenge” only for the pay-check and said, “I have never seen it, but by all accounts it is terrible. However, I have seen the house that it built, and it is terrific.”