› added 1 year ago

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TIL that kelp isn’t actually a plant, it’s part of a fourth group of organisms called protists.

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via reddit.com

6E1GX TIL that Nazi Germany conceived of a weapon called the "Sun Gun", which would have been a giant mirror in outer space that used concentrated sunlight to destroy entire cities.
E1xaX TIL alligators will allow themselves to be frozen in place in a pond to survive freezing temperatures. They seem to know instinctively just when the water will freeze and stick their noses out of the water, allowing the water to freeze around them.
WkOx9 TIL there's an engineer, in the woods near Portland Oregon, who lives in an old Boeing 727 since 1999
l7vm5 TIL that the moon is 1/400th the size of the sun but also 1/400th the distance from Earth which results in the moon and the sun being the same size in the sky, a coincidence not shared by any other known planet-moon combination.
AlZo TIL aircraft windows and doors are round to prevent metal fatigue. As the cabin pressurizes, it puts extreme pressure on the airframe, which is concentrated at right angles. The original De Havilland Comet broke apart multiple times in the 1950s because it had square windows.