› added 1 year ago

69

TIL once commonly known as “the redwood of the east,” American Chestnut trees are almost entirely extinct in the wild as of the 1940s with the exception of small, scattered populations

Read more npr.org

via reddit.com

QJoJ9 TIL according to models, Titanic should have tipped over about an hour into the sinking, killing practically everyone. Miraculously a rare coal fire during the voyage required coal to be shifted to the opposite side of the ship, creating a list that offset the incoming water during the sinking
Ag0x TIL there is an Ig Nobel Prize for unusual or trivial achievements in scientific research. This year’s winners include Arturas Zuokas, the mayor of Vilnius, LITHUANIA, for demonstrating that the problem of illegally parked luxury cars can be solved by running them over with an armored tank.
l4ZV TIL some moths have evolved a method of detecting and disturbing echolocation sounds from bats. They can confuse bats by sending false clicks back, they can tell if a bat has found them or not based on the intensity and frequency of a bat’s clicks and they can react accordingly
a1Eb TIL in the 1910s and 20s a young man who dressed fashionably to attract women but didn’t have much else going for him was called a “jellybean”
XE418 TIL that Mongolian wrestlers must wear open jackets called “zodog”.Legend has it that on one occasion a wrestler defeated all other combatants and ripped open the zodog to reveal her breasts, showing to all she was a woman. To deter any similar future incident, the jacket style was modified