R5y19 TIL Sperm whales use a flossing action on fishing lines to strip fish to eat
W7bDd TIL in 1999, the Peanut Butter Blossom was one of ten recipes inducted into the Pillsbury Bake-Off Hall of Fame at the Smithsonian National Museum of American History
9wXn7 TIL Aretha Franklin’s first husband was an abusive pimp named Ted White. Upon their marriage, he became her manager. He co-wrote multiple songs for her including Dr. Feelgood and Don’t Let Me Lose This Dram.
nWM0B TIL: your stomach lining completely renews itself every few days, because stomach acid is so strong, the lining sheds and regrows roughly every 3-6 days to protect itself.
4kWJo TIL: In the 1800s, huge blocks of ice were cut from the frozen Kennebec River in Maine and shipped to places as far as India and the Caribbean. The ice was packed in sawdust for insulation and could survive months at sea.
x6nQ7 TIL of Tempt One (aka. Tony Quan), an artist paralyzed by ALS. An artist-hacker team led by Zach Lieberman was able to restore his ability to draw by creating an open source 50 dollar eye tracking device, allowing him to draw with his eyes.
epbQk TIL sometimes medication for cats is applied to the inside of the cat’s ear
VBbvQ TIL that scientists grew stem cells into mini brains, which then developed eye-like structures on their own. The structures, called optic cups, were light-sensitive and had lenses and corneal tissue.
X0bQ6 TIL that despite the human menstrual cycle being the same length as a lunar month, there is no causal relation between the two, and it appears to be a coincidence.
OGvK6 TIL when jumpstarting a car, you should connect the negative clamp to an unpainted part of the engine block rather than the negative battery post on the dead car. Otherwise if a spark occured it could ignite the hydrogen gas emitted by the lead acid battery.
69wD7 TIL that the British created the largest non-nuclear explosion at the time in 1947. They stuffed a German bunker with 4,000 torpedo heads, 9,000 depth charges and 91,000 artillery shells; the explosion, equivalent to 3200 tons of TNT, was felt 70 km away and generated a 1+ km tall mushroom cloud.
wo4bE TIL Jean-Baptiste Botul is a fictional French philosopher created as a literary hoax. Botul's name and the name of his philosophy are a pun on "Botulism," the foodborne illness. Some writers have fallen for the hoax including philosopher Bernard-Henri Levy who quoted Botul extensively in a 2010 book