TIL about the Gish Gallop, in which one debater spews an overwhelming number of arguments, without regard to their veracity, so that their opponent is unable to answer coherently or refute the statements.
TIL about a quarter of the registered hosts on Airbnb own nearly two thirds of the listings. Wealthy users buying multiple houses to rent out is a significant contributor to the current housing crisis.
TIL - In the 1970s East Germany in effort to create an export invented nearly unbreakable glass. Attempting to export no one wanted a product that doesnt break. 120 million glasses were made before reunification, they are still used 50years later. Today the technology is used to make Gorilla glass.
TIL during the making of Toy Story 2, a technical error nearly erased the entire film and all its assets, however an animator working remotely had a backup copy that rescued it. That animator, Galyn Susman, was laid off earlier this year.
TIL Judith Love Cohen was American aerospace engineer who helped create the Abort-Guidance System that rescued the Apollo 13 astronauts. When she went into labor, she took a printout of her problem to the hospital. She called her boss and said she finished it before giving birth to actor Jack Black.
TIL during the 1920 trial of Elmer Fisher for the illegal ownership of alcohol, the jury took 1 of the bottles submitted as evidence when they went to deliberate to make sure that it was whiskey. After some time passed, the jury asked for a 2nd bottle. A short time later, it found Fisher not guilty.
TIL that the reason that Mr. Rogers told viewer that he was feeding his fish as he was doing so was because a five-year-old fan who is blind was concerned that he wasn't, so he wanted to put her mind at ease.
TIL that for centuries, tuberculosis was thought to be hereditary, or caused by malnutrition, harsh climate, etc. It wasn’t until 1865 that French military doctor Jean-Antoine Villemin proved that TB was an infectious disease by inoculating lab rabbits with material from infected humans and cattle
TIL about Dame Jocelyn Bell Burnell, an astrophysicist who discovered pulsars in 1972, had her boss not only take credit for the discovery but also win a Nobel prize for it.
TIL that from 1742 to 1752 the city of Tallin, Estonia, was governed by a former African slave named Abram Gannibal. His grandson, Alexander Pushkin, is considered to be the father of the Russian literature and the greatest Russian poet. Abram's son Ivan Gannibal founded Kherson, Ukraine
TIL Leonard Nimoy refused to join Star Trek the Animated Series without George Takai and Nichelle Nichols claiming they were proof of ethic diversity in the 23rd century.
Today I learned about the Overthrow of the Hawaiian Kingdom in 1893 when a group of European and American businessmen overthrew the monarchy. In 1993 the US government apologized for it.
TIL that english scientist Henry Cavendish discovered physical laws like Ohm's, Dalton's, or Charles's law and few others as first but they were not named after him because he didn't publish his notes and didn't tell his fellow scientists, propably due to being asocial and shy
TIL that during WWII, Ford's mile-long assembly line at ‘Willow Run Plant” produced B-24’s at a peak rate of nearly one every hour (~63min). A symbol of American industrial might, exemplifying how industry (and some 6 Million women) pivoted to support the war effort, vital to Allied victory:
TIL when Nobel Prize winning physicist Gerard 't Hooft had an asteroid named after him, he wrote a constitution for it's future inhabitants including articles that forbid use of imperial measurement units, outlaw the use of apostrophes, and limit the length of tax forms to one page.