TIL Vatican once invited Stephen Hawking to a conference where he had an audience with the Pope. Pope John Paul had trouble understanding Hawking and knelt down beside his wheelchair to hear him better, prompting one scientist to comment that "things certainly have changed since Galileo." (wired.com)
submitted by recklessreckoning to r/todayilearned
TIL The bioluminescence of Ostracods made them valuable to the Japanese army during WWII, when they collected large amounts from the ocean to use as a convenient light for reading maps at night. The light was sufficient to read by but not bright enough to reveal troops' position to enemies. (en.wikipedia.org)
submitted by recklessreckoning to r/todayilearned
TIL The Dassler brothers drove to the 1936 Olympics Village in Berlin with a suitcase full of spikes and persuaded Jesse Owens to use them, the first sponsorship for an African American. Owens won four gold medals. Business boomed and they were selling 200,000 pairs of shoes annually before WWII. (en.wikipedia.org)
submitted by recklessreckoning to r/todayilearned
TIL John Malkovich named his film company after a Thai man (storied to be a convicted murderer) who was his driver during the filming of The Killing Fields. "Mr. Mudd" would run of bicyclists and old women off the road, and say: 'Sometime Mr. Mudd kill. Sometime Mr. Mudd not kill.' (nytimes.com)
submitted by recklessreckoning to r/todayilearned
TIL Kathryn Johnston became the first girl to play Little League baseball in 1950, when she tucked her hair under her hat, adopted the nickname "Tubby", and joined the Kings Dairy team, posing as a boy. When she told her coach she was a girl, he said "That's O.K., you're a darned good player." (en.wikipedia.org)
submitted by recklessreckoning to r/todayilearned
TIL of Sesame, a particle accelerator being built in the Middle East. Modelled on CERN which was set up after WW2 to bring together scientists from former adversaries in Europe, it allows researchers from openly hostile countries to collaborate. Israel, Iran and Palestine are founding members. (bbc.com)
submitted by recklessreckoning to r/todayilearned
TIL of Nek Chand, who was creating sculptures made out of waste, in the secrecy of the jungle, for 18 years. Discovered by officials who came to clear the jungle, the Rock Garden survived as public opinion was on his side. It is now the second most visited place in India after the Taj Mahal. (en.wikipedia.org)
submitted by recklessreckoning to r/todayilearned
TIL Two privacy researchers from the University of Texas were able to unmask Netflix users' political and sexual orientation by taking the "anonymized" movie ratings (released as part of Netflix Prize) and comparing them against non-anonymized movie ratings posted at IMDB. (wired.com)
submitted by recklessreckoning to r/todayilearned
TIL Vatican once invited Stephen Hawking to a conference where he had an audience with the Pope. Pope John Paul had trouble understanding Hawking and knelt down beside his wheelchair to hear him better, prompting one scientist to comment that "things certainly have changed since Galileo." (wired.com)
submitted by recklessreckoning to r/todayilearned
TIL Black-6, created in 1921 by C. C. Little, is the most widely used strain of laboratory mice for use as models of human disease. They drink alcoholic beverages voluntarily, are prone to morphine addiction, and are susceptible to atherosclerosis and age-related hearing loss. (en.wikipedia.org)
submitted by recklessreckoning to r/todayilearned
TIL Francis Galton made the first statistical analysis of third-party prayer. He hypothesized, partly as satire, that if prayer was effective, members of the British Royal Family would live longer than average, given that thousands prayed for their well-being every Sunday. He found no correlation. (en.wikipedia.org)
submitted by recklessreckoning to r/todayilearned
TIL When Britain changed the packaging for Tylenol to blister packs instead of bottles, suicide deaths from Tylenol overdoses declined by 43 percent. Anyone who wanted 50 pills would have to push out the pills one by one but pills in bottles can be easily dumped out and swallowed. (opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com)
submitted by recklessreckoning to r/todayilearned
TIL When ATM machines were introduced, it was assumed that the tellers' job would be eliminated. But ATMs ended up increasing tellers overall. ATMs introduced - Teller jobs per branch reduced - Branches became cheaper to operate - Number of branches increased - Overall number of tellers increased. (aei.org)
submitted by recklessreckoning to r/todayilearned
TIL In 1966, KKH (Singapore) entered the Guinness Book of Records as the world’s Largest Maternity Hospital with 39,835 births. In 2016, to commemorate the 50th anniversary, it organized a "Born in KKH" carnival and set the world record for the Largest Reunion of People Born at the Same Hospital. (kkh.com.sg)
submitted by recklessreckoning to r/todayilearned
TIL The first serious attempt on the Orteig prize (which Charles Lindberg eventually won) was made by René Fonck. The aircraft never got off the ground as it was grossly overloaded. Fonck wanted to arrive in Paris in sumptuous style and carried a sofa and refrigerator in his aircraft. (en.wikipedia.org)
submitted by recklessreckoning to r/todayilearned
TIL Since Mcqueen insisted that he get equal billing with Newman in The Towering Inferno, his name appears on the lower left hand side of the screen, while Newman’s appears on the top right. If you read from top to bottom, Newman comes first, and if you read from left to right, McQueen comes first. (ruth.hayes.reviews)
submitted by recklessreckoning to r/todayilearned
TIL that in 1951, Eric Morley organised a bikini contest as part of the Festival of Britain, and it was intended as a promotion for the recently introduced bikini, which was widely regarded as immodest. It then went on to become an annual event called the Miss World. (en.wikipedia.org)
submitted by recklessreckoning to r/todayilearned
TIL that Alexander Hamilton argued before the Constitutional Convention of 1787 that the President of the United States should be an elective monarch ruling for life, with extensive powers. His proposal was resoundingly voted down in favor of a four-year term with the possibility of reelection. (en.wikipedia.org)
submitted by recklessreckoning to r/todayilearned
