› added 6 years ago

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TIL our ears and noses continue to "grow" as we age, but not due to our physiology. Instead, it is gravity which is responsible for pulling the cartilage of our ears and noses down, stretching the surrounding skin, which we perceive as growth

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R7Wm9 TIL the word quarantine comes from a seventeenth-century Venetian variant of the Italian quaranta giorni, meaning forty days, the period that all ships were required to be isolated before passengers and crew could go ashore during the Black Death plague epidemic.
mxWyE TIL In order to bolster the English navy with rope, sails, and netting, Henry VIII ordered that farmers grow 1/4 acre of hemp for every 60 acres of farmland, otherwise they’d be fined three shillings and four pence. Elizabeth I raised the fine to £5.
neQY7 TIL about "mad honey": it's honey collected from bees that have fed on rhododendron flowers, and it causes hallucinations and intoxication
9YYkr TIL there are medical professionals pushing to make sugar a controlled substance. Among other things, they would like to see the FDA remove the "generally regarded as safe" classification of sugar.
R59r8 TIL in 1975, there were 2 crude oil tanker spills on January 31st. The Corinthos Spill in the Delaware River and the Epic Colocotronis Spill in Puerto Rico dumped a combined 28.5 million gallons of oil into surrounding waters.