Commented - til - kbin.life

TIL India had a tradition in the 1970s of making military helicopters look like animals (www.peepultree.world)

TIL that there are two types of earwax: wet and dry (www.self.com)

the type of earwax you have comes down in part to your skin type, Dr. Shapiro explains. People with oilier skin may have wet earwax, while those with drier skin tend to have dry earwax, she says....

TIL that black panthers aren’t a distinct species - they are jaguars or leopards with “melanism”, the opposite of albinism (sh.itjust.works)

The trait is caused by a recessive allele in the leopard, and a dominant allele in the jaguar....

TIL about the phrase 'carbon footprint'

It was initially used by BP to shift blame to consumers instead of oil companies.

TIL Many hotels including Hilton and Marriott collect guests’ used soaps, scrape the hair and stuff off, then melt them down to make new soaps. (www.cnn.com)

Used soap from Hilton Hotels is getting a second life.

TIL computers can sometimes grow crystals (upload.wikimedia.org)

Tin in solder or some other meals can form spiky crystals when under stress. These whiskers can form short circuits if not properly insulated or not alloyed with other metals....

TIL most cultures and peoples all over the world have historically had trouble recognizing the color blue (www.ancientoriginsunleashed.com)

TIL North Koreans cannot go to Japan (en.wikipedia.org)

TIL There was a monument in Georgia that gives instructions in 8 languages on how to rebuild society after an apocalyptic event, while also functioning as a compass, calendar, and clock.

til: Benford's law: real life number are not evenly disribued, 1 occur 30% of the time (lemmy.world)

TIL that Mississippi did not make child-selling illegal until 2009, after a woman tried to sell her granddaughter for $2,000 and a car and it was discovered that there was no law to punish her under.

TIL that Trump was once a supporter for universal healthcare (www.ontheissues.org)

TIL Burger King sold a burger with so much food coloring that it turned people's poop bright green (www.usatoday.com)

TIL the US government once banned sliced bread (www.mentalfloss.com)

TIL that a Frenchman ate a plane (en.m.wikipedia.org)

https://lemmy.world/pictrs/image/31e7c2b9-3af8-49c2-9483-d0eba629c56e.jpeg

TIL researchers reviewed 40 episodes of the "Dr. Oz Show" and discovered that almost half of the medical advice had no supporting evidence (www.reliasmedia.com)

TIL The initial rate in 1866 for messages sent along transatlantic cable was $10 a word, with a ten word minimum. (www.pbs.org)

The initial rate in 1866 for messages sent along the transatlantic cable was ten dollars a word, with a ten word minimum, meaning that a skilled workman of the day would have to set aside ten weeks’ salary in order to send a single message. As a practical matter, this limited cable use to governments (transmissions from the...

TIL Adenosine is an organic compound that, when injected, stops the heart for a few seconds and is used to treat heartbeats, that are too fast (140-250bpm), in effect turning it off an on again. (en.wikipedia.org)

TIL Making a living writing books is more or less as rare as becoming a billionaire (www.theintrinsicperspective.com)

TIL Many bronze age peoples forgot what stone age tools were, and thought discovered ones as some kind of mystical talismans or signs from a thunder god (www.theguardian.com)

Also mistaken for fulgurite by the more naturalistically minded, apparently. Maybe most common in the Nordics, based on viking references?...

TIL Einstein compared Israel to Nazis in 1948 (NYT) (monyet.cc)

This letter was written to the Editors of the New York Times Dec. 2, 1948 – several months after the Declaration of the Establishment of the State of Israel....

TIL that at age 17, in 1980, Jodie Foster already had a decent handle on why some in the US are so thick about the situation in Palestine (www.interviewmagazine.com)

JODIE: The reason it has been difficult for the United States to understand the Palestinian side is not only because of the media but because colonialism is in our history. We can’t face the fact that colonialism is wrong and that it steps on a lot of toes and hurts a lot of people.