› added 11 months ago

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TIL about the Zanclean flood: 5.33 Mya the dried-up Mediterranean Sea completely refilled within months, after being cut-off from the Atlantic for 630,000 years (Messinian salinity crisis). The waters broke through the Strait of Gibraltar at 1,000x the rate of the Amazon!

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Wk8Yd TIL a new kind of artificial cornea successfully restored sight in a 78-year-old man. The surgery uses a lens which can more easily replace damaged tissue in a simpler surgery. Immediately after the surgery, the patient was able to recognize family members and read numbers on an eye chart.
PYagG TIL of the Harvard Jail House, which was put on sale by accident. Robert Pinckney bought the jailhouse for $1.50 and successfully sued the town for rent when they continued putting criminals in there. He then sold the place to Charlie McCarthy, a ventriloquist’s dummy, for $10,000 in war bonds.
6EGdm TIL of the Plum Island Pink House. The wife in a divorcing couple forced her ex-husband to build a replica of their family home as part of the divorce settlement. She didn’t specify the location, so he built it in the middle of a salt marsh and plumbed it solely with salt water. It’s uninhabitable.
ANbd TIL that the march ‘Here Comes the Bride’ is from an opera where the marriage is almost an immediate failure, and the piece is sung just before several wedding guests are murdered
Gr0E TIL that as a protest, a UK voter drew a large penis on his ballot paper next to a candidate’s name. But as the rules simply state “make a mark next to the candidate of your choice” it counted as an official vote.