Author: tidbits-admin
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Why the Eiffel Tower, Meant to Be Demolished After 20 Years, Is Still Standing
The Eiffel Tower was originally a building with a lifespan of just 20 years. What saved it from demolition was not its popularity — it was that the tower proved useful as a giant wireless antenna.
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Why Things You Had No Interest In Quietly Become Your Favourites
Simply seeing or hearing something over and over makes us more likely to like it — even if we were never interested in it to begin with. Psychologists call this the mere exposure effect.
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The Night the “Unsinkable” Ship Sank — and Every Rule of the Sea Changed
The sinking of the Titanic led in 1914 to SOLAS, the world’s first international treaty on safety at sea. Ship safety stopped being a patchwork of national rules and became a single set of standards shared by the whole world.
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The World’s Longest Fingernails: Over 13 Metres in Total, Uncut for More Than 25 Years
Diana Armstrong’s ten fingernails measure 1,306.58 centimetres in total — over 13 metres, certified by Guinness World Records in 2022. She stopped cutting them in 1997, keeping alive the memory of her daughter, who used to polish them.
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The Octopus Has Three Hearts — and Blue Blood
An octopus has three hearts — two that pump blood through the gills and one for the rest of the body — and its blood is blue, because it carries oxygen with copper instead of iron.
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Apollo 13’s Weightless Scenes Were Filmed in Real Weightlessness
Apollo 13’s weightless scenes were not CG and not wires — they were filmed in genuine weightlessness aboard NASA’s KC-135 “Vomit Comet,” across 612 parabolic flights that gave the crew about 23 seconds of free fall at a time.
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The Tallest Man Ever Stood 2.72 Metres — and the Record Still Stands After More Than 80 Years
Robert Wadlow, the tallest person in recorded history, stood 2.72 metres when last measured in 1940. More than 80 years later the record still stands — even the tallest living person is 21 centimetres shorter.
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Why, When Everyone Is Watching, No One Helps
When no one helps, it is not because everyone is cold. Two brakes are at work — diffusion of responsibility and everyone else looking calm — and experiments show the more bystanders there are, the less likely anyone is to move.
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The Mantis Shrimp Punches at 83 km/h — Then the Water Punches Again
A mantis shrimp only about 10 centimetres long punches at up to 83 km/h — so fast it creates a bubble in the water, and when that bubble collapses, the shock delivers a second hit.
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The Day Two Jumbo Jets Collided in the Fog: How a Single “OK” Led to the Worst Accident in Aviation History
In 1977, two jumbo jets collided in the fog at Tenerife airport — the worst accident in aviation history. The disaster forced a fundamental overhaul of the language used between controllers and pilots, and of hierarchy inside the cockpit.