› added 11 years ago

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TIL that when you look up at the blue sky and see white dots flying around, you’re actually seeing your own white blood cells

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VMEb8 TIL that the first CIA director stated in a letter to Congress that "high-ranking Air Force officers are soberly concerned about UFOs. But through official secrecy and ridicule, many citizens are led to believe the unknown flying objects are nonsense."
Z8LgQ TIL the Yongle Dadian was the biggest paper encyclopedia ever, comprising 22,937 manuscript rolls, or chapters, in 11,095 volumes (only 800 chapters in 400 volumes survived), on subjects such as agriculture, literature, medicine and religion
e0bwb TIL the majority of Egyptian hieroglyphs represent sounds, not objects/ideas. In English, this would be like using pictures of a pear, ant, and hood to write "parenthood."
eJWg TIL Nikola Tesla created the first logic gate in 1898 when he created the first remote controlled vehicle, over 50 years before Walther Bothe won the Nobel Peace Prize for it. He reportedly told onlookers multiple times it was simple science beforehand so that they would not think it witchcraft.
nPE9 TIL the reason why the ship commanding a fleet is called a flagship comes from the Age of Sail. The fleet would be given orders by flags sent up on the admiral’s ship, thus making it the Flagship.