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Paris operated a massive pneumatic tube network starting in 1866 that relied on pressurized air to blast cylindrical canisters of mail beneath the city streets.
Paris operated a massive pneumatic tube network starting in 1866 that relied on pressurized air to blast cylindrical canisters of mail beneath the city…
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Extreme atmospheric pressure and intense lightning storms on Jupiter and Saturn transform atmospheric methane gas into solid carbon soot, which hardens into chunks of graphite…
Extreme atmospheric pressure and intense lightning storms on Jupiter and Saturn transform atmospheric methane gas into solid carbon soot, which hardens into…
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Harry Reid International Airport in Las Vegas is one of the only airports in the world where you can gamble directly at your departure gate, generating tens of millions of dollars in revenue each year.
Harry Reid International Airport in Las Vegas is one of the only airports in the world where you can gamble directly at your departure gate, generating tens…
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Welsh road signs have accidentally featured out-of-office email replies because local authorities blindly copy-pasted Welsh translations from auto-responders without actually speaking the language.
Welsh road signs have accidentally featured out-of-office email replies because local authorities blindly copy-pasted Welsh translations from auto-responders…
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Your immune system detects and destroys mutating cells that have the potential to become cancerous every single day without you ever realizing it.
Your immune system detects and destroys mutating cells that have the potential to become cancerous every single day without you ever realizing it. inside your…
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Flight data recorders, universally known to the terrified flying public as black boxes, are actually painted bright international orange so investigators can find them in the smoldering wreckage of a crash.
Flight data recorders, universally known to the terrified flying public as black boxes, are actually painted bright international orange so investigators can…
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RMS Titanic was designed with four massive smokestacks, but the fourth one was entirely fake and built strictly to make the doomed ocean liner look cooler and more intimidating.
RMS Titanic was designed with four massive smokestacks, but the fourth one was entirely fake and built strictly to make the doomed ocean liner look cooler and…
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Humans naturally judge other people's mistakes as massive character flaws while blaming our own exact same mistakes on bad luck, famously known as the fundamental attribution error.
Humans naturally judge other people's mistakes as massive character flaws while blaming our own exact same mistakes on bad luck, famously known as the…
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Swab tests repeatedly show that the fold-down tray table at your airplane seat is the absolute dirtiest surface on the entire aircraft, harboring roughly eight times more bacteria than the lavatory flush button.
Swab tests repeatedly show that the fold-down tray table at your airplane seat is the absolute dirtiest surface on the entire aircraft, harboring roughly…
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Blizzard Entertainment actually provided dedicated, private servers to the creators of South Park just so they could accurately film the in-game footage for their legendary World of Warcraft episode.
Blizzard Entertainment actually provided dedicated, private servers to the creators of South Park just so they could accurately film the in-game footage for…
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Neil Armstrong, Buzz Aldrin, and Michael Collins had to fill out official US Customs and Border Protection forms upon returning to Earth from the Moon in 1969.
Neil Armstrong, Buzz Aldrin, and Michael Collins had to fill out official US Customs and Border Protection forms upon returning to Earth from the Moon in…
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Sean Bean was so profoundly terrified of flying in helicopters that he chose to hike up a freezing New Zealand mountain every single day in his full Boromir costume to film his scenes for the Fellowship of the Ring.
Sean Bean was so profoundly terrified of flying in helicopters that he chose to hike up a freezing New Zealand mountain every single day in his full Boromir…
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Cast members on the hit sitcom The Office were provided with fully functional computers with actual internet access to make their background acting look more authentic.
Cast members on the hit sitcom The Office were provided with fully functional computers with actual internet access to make their background acting look more…
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Diogenes the Cynic completely humiliated Plato in front of his prestigious students by barging into a lecture holding a plucked chicken and sarcastically declaring it to be a…
Diogenes the Cynic completely humiliated Plato in front of his prestigious students by barging into a lecture holding a plucked chicken and sarcastically…
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A crack in tempered glass can travel at 3,000 mph
Dropping a wine glass feels like it happens in slow motion, but the physics of the break are violently fast. Once a crack begins in a piece of tempered glass,…
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Grimoires were mostly copied from bad translations
Most of the terrifying, ancient spell books of the Middle Ages are just historically awful games of telephone. Grimoires were repeatedly copied by…
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Why firstborns are more likely to become leaders
Birth order literally hardwires your personality to be completely insufferable. Psychological studies show that firstborns, having enjoyed a brief period as…
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Herodotus mistook marmots for gold-mining ants
The 'Father of History' was notoriously bad at verifying his sources, resulting in some deeply hilarious historical records. In the 5th century BC, Herodotus…
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Why highway lanes are wider than your car
Because civil engineers implicitly know that the average driver can barely steer a straight line without drifting. The standard US interstate lane is a…
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Harry Potter was rejected by twelve publishers
Twelve different groups of highly paid literary "experts" looked at a book about an orphaned boy wizard and collectively decided, "Nah, there's absolutely no…
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Ancient Egyptians used grain receipts like money
Long before central banks, farmers were flexing their wheat portfolios. Wealth in ancient Egypt was stored in massive state-run grain silos. Instead of…
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Levitation tricks relied on really strong corsets
The incredible photos of Victorian mediums hovering in mid-air had less to do with telekinesis and more to do with heavy-duty tailoring. Fraudulent psychics…
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Why happy people underestimate depression
Trying to explain sadness to an optimist is like trying to explain color to a rock. The hot-cold empathy gap is a cognitive bias where people underestimate…
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Halo's ring world came from a 1970 sci-fi novel
Bungie didn't invent the concept of a massive habitable ring floating in space. They shamelessly lifted it from Larry Niven's 1970 sci-fi novel 'Ringworld.'…
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