› added 3 months ago

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Today I learned there’s a Norse god of skiing! ⛷️ 😳

Read more wikipedia.org

via reddit.com

0d87R TIL of the Mechanical Turk, a chess-playing "automaton" from the 1700s actually operated by a cleverly hidden human. It toured the palaces of Europe, even playing against Benjamin Franklin and Napoleon, who attempted to cheat multiple times, prompting the Turk to swipe all the pieces off the board.
k7e7 TIL from 2011 to 2013, a hacker group repeatedly broke into Microsoft’s computer network: Using stolen credentials, they even were able to walk into Microsoft’s headquarters in Redmond. Walking out again, they took three unreleased Xbox One dev kits with them.
Yvgx TIL when Catholics were persecuted in England in the 1500s, priests holding secret masses would hide from search parties in “priest holes,” secret chambers within the house. As searches could last week, sometimes the priests starved or asphyxiated.
leGK TIL that US Law does not protect speech that is “likely to provoke the average person to retaliation”
BgQNK TIL indoor air pollutants can be 2 to 5 times higher than outdoor levels and in some cases these levels can exceed 100 times that of outdoor levels of the same pollutants.