› added 13 years ago

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TIL that blind-from-birth men prefer female figures with the same waist-to-hip ratio (0.7) as sighted men do

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j618M TIL almost all rice contains arsenic, a Group 1 carcinogen. Research found that 50% of rice consumed in the United Kingdom intended for infant consumption exceeded the required levels of arsenic. However, scientists found a method of cooking rice that removes much of the arsenic.
5YGbQ TIL Kareem Abdul-Jabbar asked for $5k more than the $30k he was offered to be in Airplane! just so he could buy an Oriental rug he had his eye on.
d8Vr7 TIL a French woman, Marie Belmont-Gobert, hid a British soldier in a cramped cupboard in her house from Jan 1915 to the end of WWI in 1918, despite German officers living in her home and socialising in the room the cupboard was in. She received an OBE post-war. Cupboard is in museum in U.K.
QNpxd TIL Scientists at the Parkes radio telescope in Australia spent 17 years trying to identify powerful but extremely short radio bursts that would appear at seemingly random intervals. In 2015 they finally identified the cause: a microwave oven at the facility being opened prematurely.
yQ6Wl TIL of Imber. A village in the UK that has existed since before Roman times, has written records dating to 967AD, is in the doomsday book, and that had every single resident evicted by the army in the 1920's, so they could practice urban warfare there.