TIL Charles Barkley was friends with, and went - unannounced - to the funeral of, a cat litter scientist https://ift.tt/6gpZSMn

TIL the RTX 4090 has nearly 50% greater computing speed than the most powerful supercomputer of 2004 https://ift.tt/y2zonAl

TIL, in The Blair Witch Project, the reason they never show the witch on camera is that the cameraman forgot to pan to the left https://ift.tt/QLGR19v

TIL each element on the Periodic Table corresponds to one solution of the main equation in the field of quantum mechanics & that the entire field of chemistry emerged from that single equation. https://ift.tt/0o3Y9Un

TIL it took ~400,000 years following the Big Bang for the Universe to cool down enough to allow atoms to form https://ift.tt/oKRstEy

TIL the Empire State Building opened during the Depression, and took 20 years to become profitable. https://ift.tt/6iypHah

TIL Boeing built an entire fake town on top of their Seattle area factory during WW2 https://ift.tt/kUgFQA8

TIL that during the first 4 days after the United Kingdom entered World War II, over 400,000 dogs and cats — some 26 percent of London’s pets — were voluntarily put to death by their owners without any Government direction, due to fears that they could not be properly cared for during the war. https://ift.tt/W2yeoaH

TIL that Ruhollah Khomeini never issued a fatwa against Salman Rushdie. What was given was called a hukm, which - unlike the fatwa - remain valid even after the death of the authority who issued it. https://ift.tt/0NdXYwu

TIL that some species of female butterflies have a second stomach called the bursa copulatrix which is highly specialized to digest only one substance. https://ift.tt/kYRgCJo

TIL Kenneth Branagh has been nominated for eight Oscars over thirty years - with only TWO being the same category - Director, Actor, Live Action Short Film, Adapted Screenplay, Supporting Actor, Picture, Director (2), and Original Screenplay. https://ift.tt/x52OUNl

TIL that the phrase slush fund comes from the profits of a ship's cook selling 'slush' - the fat skimmed from the boiling of salted meat https://ift.tt/zwThAJp

TIL that Warren Beatty was interviewed in character as Dick Tracy in a 2008 TV special that aired once on TCM. In the show, the Tracy character was interviewed about Beatty's 1990 movie, "Dick Tracy." Beatty made the special to retain sequel rights to the character. He still hasn't made the sequel. https://ift.tt/aLltZ6v

TIL : During the Blitz, the British military set up “Starfish towns” as decoys to draw bombers off real towns and military targets. They were bombed over 700 times, saving 2000+ lives. https://ift.tt/B0sGLPD

TIL: San Fransisco has very few cemeteries. But the city was once full of cemeteries. As San Francisco's population rapidly grew, "people turned against the cemeteries". Eventually, most of the cemeteries were dug up and transferred out of the city. https://ift.tt/19xlISg

TIL The voice actor Charles Martinet, most famous for being the iconic voices of the Nintendo-characters Mario and Luigi, is also the voice of the dragon Paarthurnax in "The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim". https://ift.tt/rx9Py2d

TIL that food assistance programs were made to get rid of excess cheese that the government bought from farmers https://ift.tt/w5bT0r9

TIL: In 1914, the exchange rate of the German mark to the American dollar was about 4.2 to one. Nine years later, it was 4.2 trillion to one. The price of a loaf of bread went from 250 marks in January 1923 to 200 trillion in November https://ift.tt/emzYBuE

TIL. Physiologist Giles Brindley, in 1983 presented his treatment for erectile disfunction by injecting himself before his talk and dropping his pants to show the crowd of urologists. https://ift.tt/80KNm51

TIL The 10k steps a day benchmark was actually just a marketing campaign from a Japanese company called Yamasa who made the first wearable pedometer https://ift.tt/sqtGEgC

TIL TGI Fridays stopped requiring employees to wear flair after Office Space came out and customers began making jokes about the flair https://ift.tt/blrjTuX