TodayILearned - Kbin.cafe

TIL that the US considered dropping an atomic bomb on Kyoto. However, Secretary of War Henry Stimson had vacationed there and admired the city. So, he convinced President Truman to choose another target. Nagasaki was chosen in its place. (media.kbin.social)

TIL “Pull Yourself Up By Your Bootstraps” was originally meant sarcastically, or to suggest an impossible accomplishment, because it is impossible for someone to pull themselves up by their bootstraps. (media.kbin.social)

TIL Malignant Hyperthermia is a deadly reaction to general anesthesia. Most don't know they have the condition until it's too late. It's the reason anesthesiologists always ask you if anyone in the family had a fatal reaction to anesthesia. (medlineplus.gov)

_"Malignant hyperthermia is a severe reaction to particular anesthetic drugs that are often used during surgery and other invasive procedures....

TIL There have been multiple instances of people stealing entire Bridges (www.theguardian.com)

www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-india-61066473

Parkinson's disease: Can caffeine help lower risk? (www.medicalnewstoday.com)

New research in a population from Singapore suggests that individuals who drink coffee and tea appear to have a lower risk of Parkinson's disease, even if they are genetically predisposed to it.

TIL ancient Egyptians didn't use Hieroglyphics as an everyday writing system. They reserved this for special functions. The Egyptians used two script-like writing systems called Hieratic and Demotic. This eventually became Coptic script. (en.wikipedia.org)

TIL NASA calculated that you only need 40 digits of Pi to calculate the circumference of the observable universe, to the accuracy of 1 hydrogen atom (www.jpl.nasa.gov)

TIL - Miss Yvonne, the most beautiful woman in puppetland is... (peewee.fandom.com)

Charlies (iasip) MOM??

Arty It's Me – Let's Talk 'Bout It (Official Music Video 4K) #StandWithUkraine (youtu.be)

TIL that over 60% of jurisdictions in the US use algorithmic pretrial assessment tools to help determine who should be jailed before their court date and who should not. (kbin.social)

Why YSK: In many places it can take years for a case to come to trial. Judges have to make a decision in such cases to determine whether an accused person should be jailed in the interim. In recent years many jurisdictions have adopted algorithmic tools that essentially create a “risk profile” which assigns a value....

Residents of Pakistan's Himalayan region are “making glaciers”; converting water back to ice using an ancient process. It’s guided by their elders and backed by the U.N. (www.npr.org)

TIL passage of merchandise over the Silk Road was a mere trickle compared with the maritime flow of goods between India and Rome during the first-millennium CE (scroll.in)

"Roman texts convey little meaningful information about Indian political dynasties and offer even less about the practical operations of Indo-Roman trade. A series of Egyptian documents has recently revolutionised understanding of the logistical and political requirements for moving bulk goods from India across the Sahara and...

TIL that during the filming of the James Bond film Goldfinger (1964), the actor Harold Sakata who played Oddjob, badly burned his hand in the electrocution scene. (en.wikipedia.org)

However Sakata managed to last until the director said cut.

TIL that Ford filed a patent over technology that could remotely disable a car radio or air conditioner, lock someone out of a vehicle, or cause a car to constantly beep, if a car payment is missed. (fortune.com)

Ford Motor Co. has filed for a patent on technology that could remotely shut down your radio or air conditioning, lock you out of your vehicle, or prompt it to ceaselessly beep if you miss car payments. Ford said it has no plans to use the technology, contained in just one of the many patents filed by the auto-making giant....

TIL that many bugle players at military funerals are simply hitting a button to play 'Taps' as there aren't enough proficient bugle players to go around. (youtu.be)

Bugles Across America reveals secret about military funerals

TIL that the tusk of the narwhal is a canine tooth (en.wikipedia.org)

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Narwhal#Tusk...

TIL why those with autism avoid eye contact; an overactive subcortical system, combined with an imbalance in the excitatory and inhibitory systems, can make eye contact feel like 'burning' (www.sciencedaily.com)

Direct gaze - that is, eye contact with another person - causes the subcortical system to overload, and the parts of the brain that deal with arousal and calming are failing to strike a balance. The end result is that direct eye contact triggers a physiological response which makes it physically uncomfortable to maintain eye...

TIL 70,000 years ago a volcanic eruption killed many humans, leaving only 1,000 human alive in the whole word. This created a population bottleneck which vastly reduced diversity in human genetics. (en.wikipedia.org)

The Toba eruption (sometimes called the Toba supereruption or the Youngest Toba eruption) was a supervolcano eruption that occurred around 74,000 years ago at the site of present-day Lake Toba in Sumatra, Indonesia. It is one of Earth's largest known explosive eruptions. The Toba catastrophe theory holds that this event caused a...

Why some alloys don't expand when heated! (www.caltech.edu)

This is absolutely the coolest thing I learned today!

TIL NASA used to employ women as human calculators and NASA had whole rooms devoted to them (www.youtube.com)

Katherine Johnston and Euler's method

TIL that following the Roman departure from Britain (410 CE), systematic construction of paved highways in the UK did not resume until the early 18th century (en.wikipedia.org)

cross-posted from: lemmy.world/post/1815113...

TIL that arguably the first comprehensive English dictionary was written by one dude over the course of seven years and that was THE dictionary for 70+ years (en.wikipedia.org)

TIL about the Puss Caterpillar, it may look harmless with its soft and furry appearance, but it conceals venomous spines that can cause excruciating pain upon contact that even morphine struggles to quell. (en.wikipedia.org)

"The inch-long larva is generously coated in long, luxuriant hair-like setae, making it resemble a tiny Persian cat, the characteristic that presumably gave it the name "puss". It is variable in color, from downy grayish white to golden brown to dark charcoal gray. It often has a streak of bright orange running longitudinally....

TIL of COCONUTS-2b, a giant gas planet that takes over 1 million years to orbit around its star (en.wikipedia.org)

TIL that the average email produces about 4 grams of CO2, which can go up with attachments (www.youtube.com)

The average email produces 4gs of CO2. It takes 21g of CO2 to boil water for a cup of tea. So every 5 emails you’ve sent burned as much carbon as 1 cup of tea....