The ancient Romans made many attempts to fix the calendar year before landing on 12 months and leap years (www.bbc.com)
I edited the title because my grammar is terrible
TIL: Edison shocked elephants with AC to disprove Tesla, trying to prove that DC is safer (science.howstuffworks.com)
TIL that the white stuff that sometimes appears on chocolate is called "chocolate bloom". (en.wikipedia.org)
TIL that in the early days of Fed-Ex, there was one time the company couldn't afford the fuel bill for their planes, so the founder took the company's last $5,000 and went to Las Vegas and won $27,000 (en.wikipedia.org)
TIL: The Phrase “Death To America” Didn’t exist Before the CIA Overthrew the Iranian Government for Nationalizing their Oil in 1953 (medium.com)
TIL Soviet cosmonauts carried a shotgun on space missions (en.wikipedia.org)
It was purportedly (and probably in actuality) intended as a survival aid to be used after landings and before recovery in the Siberian wilderness, although allegedly was intended as a defensive weapon against in-space attacks by the US space program.
TIL about Wabi-sabi, the Japanese aesthetic worldview of accepting the simple, imperfect, and transient things in the world. Similar to kintsugi (repairing broken pottery with golden paste), it's abou (en.wikipedia.org)
TIL some species of ants farm aphids like we do cows (www.mcgill.ca)
Link: www.westcoastseeds.com/…/do-ants-farm-aphids....
TIL about “passive houses,” building that are airtight and require barely any energy to heat or cool (en.m.wikipedia.org)
More info here: wsj.com/…/passive-home-design-massachusetts-2c89a…
TIL about the Migingo island, one of the most densely populated islands in the world. The rocky island has density 65,500/km2 (lemmy.world)
TIL Cessna made a budget Fighter Jet using Cessna jet engines and other Cessna parts. (en.wikipedia.org)
The Scorpion is a tandem-seat twinjet aircraft with an all-composite material fuselage designed for light attack and intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance missions. Production costs were minimized by using common commercial off the shelf technology, manufacturing resources and components developed for Cessna’s...
TIL sailing ships commonly moved around without wind by warping (en.m.wikipedia.org)
Warping is throwing an anchor either manually for a small ship or by rowing the anchor out and dropping it farther away for a larger ship. Then the ship would reel it to change position. Good for maneuvering in harbor. Etymologically related to “throwing” and essentially threading a needle across the sea....
TIL Earthworms aren't native to the northern United States; they are a recent invasive species which does significant damage to boreal forests (www.outdoorlife.com)
TIL the CIA trains its spies not to slouch and lean, as that's an American tell (www.cpr.org)
TIL - J and J knew for decades that asbestos lurked in its Baby Powder and failed to disclose it to regulators or the public. (www.reuters.com)
TIL: The average single male changes his sheets just four times a year. (www.cbc.ca)
Watch out ladies, the man of your dreams may have the bed of your nightmares.
TIL the Aztecs regarded childbirth as a form of battle. Women who died during childbirth were thought to rise to one of the highest heavens - the same one as for male warriors who died in battle. (www.mexicolore.co.uk)
TIL during the early days of the internet, companies tried to prohibit linking to some of their sites. The linked site linked to all of them during half of 2002 (web.archive.org)
In one of the even more absurd cases: According to an AP report (cited in Slashdot), Intentia International has filed criminal charges against Reuters PLC, alleging that the news service illegally obtained an earnings report that the company had not yet released, by guessing the URL at which it had been posted on Intentia's...
IL marshmallows are a 4000 year old food beginning in ancient Egypt AND originally they were made from the sap of a mallow plant…that grows in marshes… (candyusa.com)
TIL psychedelics supposedly work by desynchronizing the brain (www.nature.com)
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 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 most cultures and peoples all over the world have historically had trouble recognizing the color blue (www.ancientoriginsunleashed.com)
