› added 6 years ago

92

TIL Elephants "may show lateral preference when grasping with their trunks: some prefer to twist them to the left, others to the right." Essentially, they can be left or right "trunked"!

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7Lyx TIL of Robert Peace, a ‘black guy from the hood’ who ended up graduating from Yale with honors in molecular biophysics and biochemistry, moving back to his 'hood’ and teaching biology at his old highschool, engineering his own strain of Marijuana and getting killed over a drug deal
VMxrp TIL that about 50,000 British criminals were "transported" to the American colonies for either 7 or 14 years as punishment in leiu of the death sentence. It ended with the American Revolution. UK jails then became overcrowded until they created the new colony of Australia and the practice restarted
4xxo TIL that Wales’ national symbol is a leek because on the eve of the battle against the Saxons, St David advised the Britons to wear leeks in their caps so as to easily distinguish friend from foe. This helped to secure a great victory.
D6lp TIL Lake Vostok, the 16th largest lake in the world, was only confirmed to exist in 1993. It’s located in Antarctica beneath a 4km ice sheet. The average water temperature is around −3 °C; it remains liquid below freezing point because of high pressure from the weight of the ice above it
Lk1Y9 TIL that when Yuri Gagarin visited Manchester, it was pouring rain. He however insisted that the roof of his convertible remain down and refused an umbrella, saying that 'If all these people have turned out to welcome me and can stand in the rain, so can I'.