› added 10 years ago

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TIL that when it was time to make Pokemon Stadium, future Nintendo President Satoru Iwata got a hold of the PKMN Red/Green source code, and figured out how all the battle logic worked so it could be ported. The original programmer was astounded he figured out the complicated system - in just a week.

Read more iwataasks.nintendo.com

via reddit.com

LQj7d TIL that Jeffrey Hudson, a court dwarf of the English Queen Henrietta Maria, shot a man in a duel, after which he went into exile, was captured by Barbary pirates, spent 25 years enslaved in North Africa during which he grew 25 inches, which he attributed to the hard conditions.
vkJ8 TIL that during the American Revolutionary War, it is estimated that over twice as many American fighters died from disease (17,000+) as from battle (6,800).
brNE TIL that the longest continuous experiment was started in 1927. The goal was to demonstrate that some substances that appear to be solid are in fact very-high-viscosity fluids. The viscosity of the pitch used is 230 billion times that of water, taking several years to form a single drop.
e0pLL TIL that Thomas Jefferson believed mastodons still lived somewhere in the West and instructed Lewis and Clark to look for one
kJL44 TIL that only 4 months after his brother (and fellow Olympic wrestler) was murdered by crazy-ass John DuPont, Mark Shultz was a last minute substitute in a UFC fight. Despite having no real experience with punching or kicking, he dominated an opponent 5 inches taller and 40 pounds heavier than him.