Post * xOa1 — Curious Curator

› added 9 years ago

132

TIL of Daniel Sickles who murdered the son of Francis Scott Key across the street from the White House, lost his leg at Gettysburg, had an affair with the Queen of Spain, and died in his bed at 94.

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9wbxm TIL that in 1967, radio astronomer Jocelyn Bell Burnell discovered the first pulsar, a rapidly spinning neutron star emitting precise radio pulses. Initially it was thought to be a potential signal from an extraterrestrial intelligence, so it was named LGM-1 (short for Little Green Men).

KrjG TIL that paternity tests are outlawed in France and Germany “due to fears that more families could be broken by divorce if all fathers were given access to them.”

9YPEB TIL Picasso once famously said: "It took me four years to paint like Raphael, but a lifetime to paint like a child." Researchers hypothesized that this is because early childhood is a period characterized by "exuberant neural connectivity" that facilitates "arbitrary sensory experiences in infants."

yQ75M TIL that in ancient Egypt, original marshmallows - made from the roots of the Althaea officinalis plant - were reserved for royalty.

dp1K TIL Alcohol consumption tends to follow a log normal curve. In America, the top 10% of drinkers consume ~5x more alcohol than the next highest drinkers.