› added 1 year ago

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TIL that the smell of freshly-cut grass is actually a plant distress call. What we interpret as a fresh smell is a compound plants release when in distress.

awrlZ TIL of Stephen Wiltshire, an autistic British artist who can draw a landscape from memory after seeing it just once. He can draw entire cities from memory, after just a single, short, helicopter ride. When he drew Rome, he drew the exact number of columns in the Pantheon
D1XQJ TIL that the statutes of limitations in some US states for sexual crimes against children includes a provision that lowers the amount of years if the victim "reasonably should have discovered" the abuse
pOG4 TIL the inventor of the Segway isn’t dead. His name is Dean Kaman, and he has been working on a water purification machine to bring clean water to the parts of the world without it. He designed the new Coca Cola fountain dispensers in exchange for Coke’s support in distributing his machines.
PYlaZ TIL that Japanese bullet trains have never had fatalities due to derailments or collisions, but once a boy had his finger stuck in the closing doors and was dragged along until dead. Court fined the station officer present $5k and had Japan Railways pay the boy's parents $440k in compensation.
LQQKp TIL that the term "fundamentalism" was coined in 1920, and was named after a series of 12 Evangelical protestant pamphlets called " The Fundamentals: A Testimony to the Truth." The pamphlets argued that the Bible was the literal and inerrant word of God.