› added 8 years ago

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TIL that the pharmaceutical company, Gilead, developed a drug that can cure Hepatitis C which led to plummeting stock prices as fewer patients required the drug due to the fact that it worked so well.

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via ift.tt

WaEN TIL in 1880 Alex Graham Bell, inventor of the telephone, also invented the photophone, a device that transmits sound using visible light. Although he called it his greatest invention, it wasn’t until the 1980s, over a century later, that it precursed fibre optics, the backbone of the modern Internet
E10pp TIL that there is a group of sea wolves on Vancouver Island that can swim for miles and 90% of their diet is seafood. They primarily eat salmon but also forage on barnacles, lams, herring eggs, seals, and river otters.
0wVRp TIL Norway had the biggest merchant fleet during WW2 with over 1000 ships, and shipped 40% of the fuel to the allies during WW2. The British PM Winston Churchill and the US President Franklin Roosevelt stated that “Nortraship is worth more for the Allied cause than a million soldiers on the ground”
kM5E TIL Jon Stewart dropped his last name (Leibowitz) due to his strained relationship with his father. He considered using his mother’s maiden name but thought it would’ve been too big a “f*ck you” to his Dad.
E10V TIL: That “Chimpanzees, who cannot swim, have drowned in zoo moats trying to save others.” And “Given the chance to get food by pulling a chain that would also deliver an electric shock to a companion, Rhesus monkeys will starve themselves for several days.”