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137

TIL the world’s entire demand of electricity could be supplied with a solar farm the size of Spain.

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NL7b TIL Volvo invented the modern seatbelt in 1959. To save lives, they decided to make it an “open patent,” allowing other manufacturers to use the same design. Every car produced today uses this mechanism, considered one of the major safety inventions of the 20th century, saving over 1M lives.
xV8v0 TIL that the AMSAT-OSCAR 7 amateur radio satellite failed in 1981 due to a short circuit in the batteries and was thought dead. But Polish anticommunists found that it still worked when it was exposed to sunlight -- and used it to covertly send messages to activists in other cities and the West.
jbwX TIL to be a true “lucky rabbit’s foot” charm, it has to be the left hind leg of the rabbit, and be caught in a cemetery on either a full moon, new moon, or a Friday the 13th.
x6La1 TIL that legendary Germs/Nirvana/Foo Fighters guitarist Pat Smear was an extra/dancer in Prince's music video for Raspberry Beret
Wk4AN TIL Alex Haley, author of Roots and The Autobiography of Malcolm X, conducted the first Playboy interview. He later interviewed some of the most prominent figures of the 1960s for the magazine including MLK and George Lincoln Rockwell, leader of the American Nazi Party.