› added 6 years ago

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TIL that Nikola Tesla predicted the modern cell phone in 1926: “We shall be able to communicate with one another instantly, irrespective of distance. Not only this, but...we shall see and hear one another as perfectly as though we were face to face... a man will be able to carry one in his pocket”

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GAYyG TIL NASA estimates that Voyager 1 will have enough power to continue communicating until 2025, 48 years after its launch. Its fuel for running the communications equipment, plutonium-238 dioxide, will have decayed too much to generate the required heat to keep them operating.
W7R6B TIL that Instead of toilet paper, Ancient Roman used a sponge on the end of a long stick that was shared by everyone in the community. This device was called a Tersorium. When not is use the stick stayed in a bucket of heavily salted seawater in the communial bathroom.
XE48r TIL after making edits and appealing to the MPAA for an R rating, Scarface director Brian DePalma felt that the cuts he made were so minor no one would notice if he put them back in, so he did.
D1XVJ TIL In 2014 two chemists co-authored a paper describing all those consumer products appropriately labelled as “chemical free”. The paper was blank.
eKyD TIL: The quintessentially 40’s-mid 60’s American futuristic Jetsonesque architecture (think Back To The Future, bowling alleys, diners etc) which includes monuments such as the “Welcome to Las Vegas” sign and the Seattle “Space Needle” is known as “Googie”