› added 6 years ago

981

TIL The first bumper cars were not meant to collide. Instead, drivers supposed to avoid collisions despite all the erratic driving. Hence the first company to patent a bumper car in 1920 was called Dodgem.

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Ow1e TIL there is a “No-Go Zone” in France as a result of WWI battles which littered the grounds with unexploded weapons and toxic chemicals
aw969 TIL Dennis Ritchie who invented the C programming language, co-created the Unix operating system, and is largely regarded as influencing a part of effectively every software system we use on a daily basis died 1 week after Steve Jobs. Due to this, his death was largely overshadowed and ignored.
d8gaZ TIL that US pennies were made of steel in 1943 due to a copper shortage during world war 2.
5Vw79 TIL of a species of gorilla-like "giant apes" that were three to four times the weight of a human (200–300 kg / 440–660 lb) and went extinct about 300,000 years ago
R5DY7 TIL of Cordyceps sinesis or caterpillar fungus, which parasitizes larvae of ghost moths and produces an edible fruiting body which is valued in traditional Chinese medicine as an aphrodisiac.