› added 9 years ago

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TIL Jupiter is a “cosmic vacuum cleaner.” Its gravitational influence causes comets and asteroids to collide with it. The rate of impacts on Jupiter is about 2000-8000X higher than the rate on Earth. Without Jupiter, the probability of asteroid impacts with the inner planets would be much greater.

d8xMB TIL that, barred from working by the Nazis as a Jewish actor, Leon Reuss tricked them into celebrating him as an Aryan idol by adjusting his dialect to that of mountain farmers, growing his beard, bleaching his hair by bathing every 10 days in diluted hydrogen peroxide, & claiming to be a peasant.
e0mAb TIL that the concept of a soulmate was originally put forth by Plato. According to his story humans originally had 4 arms, 4 legs and 2 faces. The gods feared humans were too powerful and so Zeus split them in two, condemning them to spend their lives searching for the other half of their soul.
BAmb TIL Irena Sendler smuggled approximately 2,500 Jewish children out of the Warsaw Ghetto and then provided them with false identity documents and shelter outside the Ghetto, saving those children from the Holocaust.
5M4p TIL: In the US, it’s illegal to fire someone for talking about their salary with their coworkers.
rRPXd TIL that in the most famous scene of the movie "Gone With The Wind", an alternate line "Frankly my dear, I just don't care." was also shot in the event the censors would object. The censors approved the movie but fined producer David O. Selznick $5,000 for including the curse.