› added 8 months ago

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TIL for 2 years the US had a 100 year old man as president of the senate; being 3rd in line for the presidency

Read more bioguide.congress.gov

via reddit.com

e0Mvg TIL The minimum sound threshold a human ear drum can detect is 1x10^-12 watts/square meter. To put in perspective just how sensitive the human ear is we could scale up, so in order to detect a minimum of 1 newton (0.2 pounds) of force, an ear drum would be roughly the entire surface area of England.
XEN4D TIL that one of the reasons that the British Navy lost ground against the Continental Navy was the Great Hurricane of 1780, which killed 22k-27k people, broke ships free of their moorings, and tossed cannons 100 feet in the air, among other things.
VJYp TIL: Ragnarok, the Norse end of the world, is happening in a week (Feb. 22nd)
YJ7d TIL that in 2008, Harvard created their own version of the classic Food Pyramid that more accurately reflected dietary science.
vn7K TIL Barns are painted red because red paint is cheap, the paint is cheap because the iron is abundant and the iron is abundant because it’s the final element formed from a star’s death.