Recent comments in /f/todayilearned

dale1320 t1_jcmb3en wrote

Reply to TIL Drinking on St. Patrick's Day was largely frowned upon until the late 1970s. Restriction were lifted for Lent, but only for the Food part, not for the Drinking part. by EQ2_Tay

Good article, but not quite accurate in one respect. I am old enough to remember the original dying of the Chicago River green by the Plumbers Union and Mayor Richard J. Daley. I can attest that,, at least in Chicago, and from what I was told by my parents and others from around the US, that the "cultural norm" of drinking to excess on St. Patrick's Day goes back A LOT further than the Budweiser advertising campaign of the 1970s. Even in the mid-60s there were full-on pub crawls taking place on March 17. The Catholic Church in Ireland may have frowned upon drinking on Feast Day, but in America it was full-bore beer drinking.

All the reminds me of an old jok I heard as a wee young lae:

What's the difference between an Irish Wedding and an Irish Wake?

One less drunk.

Happy St. Pat's Day everyone everywhere!

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Dawnawaken92 t1_jcm7ygr wrote

Reply to TIL: Staufen, Germany, a picturesque town with buildings dating to the 16th century, is literally being destroyed by a failed attempt to harness geothermal energy. by AUWarEagle82

The cause of these crevices is a geothermal drilling operation in 2007 that went awry. To harness geothermal energy, the drillers had to perforate a layer of groundwater and a separate layer of anhydrite, a water-free chemical substance. Unfortunately, this process inadvertently increased the amount of pressure in the ground below Staufen, which allowed the groundwater to bleed into the anhydrite.

The resulting chemical reaction formed gypsum, which caused Staufen’s ground to swell by up to five inches, depending on the exact location. Although the local government has taken steps to mitigate this problem, the rising ground has reached a point of no return and continues to rise at a rate of about one centimeter per year.

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Landlubber77 t1_jclw53t wrote

Reply to TIL Dr. Henry Kissinger was the first honourary member of the Harlem Globetrotters by Greene_Mr

> Henry Alfred Kissinger is a German-born American diplomat, geopolitical consultant, and politician who served as United States Secretary of State and National Security Advisor under the presidential administrations of Richard Nixon and Gerald Ford, and had the dopest fucking hook shot your grandmammy ever saw in her gotdamn life. [Needs no citation, shit was money, son]

-- Wikipedia

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picado t1_jcluj2s wrote

Reply to TIL that in 1950, scientists at the University of California, Berkeley, synthesized a highly radioactive element by bombarding curium-242 with alpha particles. They named this new element "Californium" and its discovery was initially kept classified due to its potential military uses. by theID10T

That's just one of 16 elements they've discovered:

https://www2.lbl.gov/Science-Articles/Archive/new-elements-here.html

The cyclotron was originally invented at Berkeley and that led to them being the top laboratory for this research.

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