› added 11 years ago

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TIL that Reddit is wrong in their advert of Reddit Gold, claiming that while diamonds are forever, gold is the better electric conductor. Diamonds can in fact be superconductors (whereas gold cannot!)

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via reddit.com

bppa TIL a botched embalming job on Pope Pius XII (died 1958) caused his body to rapidly decompose while laying in state. The Vatican Swiss guards guarding the body had to be changed every 10 minutes because the awful smell caused some of them to pass out.
DQ9aV TIL about Lena Zavaroni, a Scottish singer who was the youngest person in history to have an album in the top 10 of the UK Albums Chart at the age of 10, when she also performed with Frank Sinatra. She sadly died at the age of 35 from pneumonia following an operation to cure her depression.
VdK0 TIL that “o'clock” is a contraction of “stroke of the clock” and comes from 15th century references to medieval mechanical clocks
wLB9E TIL that marbles and other glass shaped through the technique of glass blowing are heated in a furnace known as the "glory hole". The term predates the more modern colloquial use of the phrase. It's use goes back as far as 1825!
VRPG TIL when volunteers providing food to elderly and poor people through the Meals on Wheels program began to notice that people were sharing their limited food with their pets, an organization called AniMeals was developed to feed their pets as well.