› added 5 years ago

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TIL, percussive maintenance is when you pound your fist on something to get it to work. The astronauts on Apollo 12 successfully did it when one of the cameras stopped working.

5YDG9 TIL six-month old infants recognize when adults imitate them, and perceive imitators as more friendly. The babies looked and smiled longer at an adult who imitated them, as opposed to when the adult responded in other ways and approached them on their own.
grdxX TIL After Qing China defeated and genocided the Dzungars, Dzungar leader Amursana fled to Siberia and died. The Qing Emperor demanded his body be surrendered for "posthumous punishment" (past examples: public display, destruction of ashes), but the Tsar refused, causing a diplomatic incident.
jNVgE TIL: The ashes of Clyde Tombaugh, the man who discovered the planet Pluto, were sent to outer space on the New Horizons spacecraft making his the first human remains to leave our solar system.
X0kwD TIL there that there is a Township in Ontario which has 61 letters, as it consists of the names of every village and hamlet in its borders. Most Ontario Townships and forced-amalgamated rural towns simply use the name of one of the communities as the official legal name.
wvG1 TIL that depleted uranium is the less radioactive part of uranium ore from the “enrichment” purification process rather than “used-up” nuclear fuel. It is used in munitions because of its density, self-sharpening and incendiary properties.