› added 12 years ago

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TIL: Cannibalism has been recorded in over 1500 species

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kOrp5 TIL Stirling Colgate, heir to the Colgate toothpaste family fortune, was a physicist who proposed the use of satellites for detection of nuclear weapons testing. He went on to conduct research that helped Chandrasekhar win a Nobel Prize after realizing that the satellites were detecting supernovae.
BgdYb TIL that in addition to names like “Hope”, “Felicity”, and “Prudence”, Puritans also named their children things like “Jesus-Christ-came-into-the-world- to-save”, “Damned”, and “Fly-fornication”.
MeQW0 TIL that the first winner of the "Computer Science Man of the Year” award was Grace Hopper in 1969, who made the first compiler and coined the term debugging after finding a moth in the computer.
QJ8YL TIL the reason Converse shoes have a piece of felt on the sole is so they can be classified as a slipper instead of a sneaker. By doing this they are able to lower their import tariff tax from 37.5% to only 3%.
9YogB TIL The longest confirmed tank kill in history was recorded in 1991 when a British Challenger-1 tank with the callsign 11B fired at an Iraqi main battle tank from a distance of more than 5,100 meters – just above three miles – with a Depleted Uranium round.