› added 10 years ago

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TIL in 1897 Indiana tried to change the value of Pi to 3.2 via legislation

8aEeZ TIL Pablo Escobar offered to pay off Columbia’s $10 billion foreign debt in order to avoid prosecution
QQQX TIL that cats have a non-fatal terminal velocity and as a result have survived falls from airplanes thousands of feet in the air.
OoJA6 TIL in 1960, an Australian father won nearly $3 million (adjusted AU$) in the lottery, with his picture getting plastered all over the news. Shortly after, his 8-year-old son was kidnapped for ransom and eventually murdered. This changed anonymity laws for lottery winners in Australia forever.
epwVb TIL that there's a cosmological model that says our observable universe is inside a black hole.
yQVve Take a look out your window and you're bound to see a dinosaur or two—or at least the descendant of one. That little blue jay? Dinosaur. The obnoxious early rising crow? Dinosaur. The squirrel running up the tree? Well, that’s still a squirrel. But those feathered friends make your yard a real-life Jurassic Park. Most researchers believe birds are descendants of a group of dinosaurs that included the Tyrannosaurus rex. Fossil research has shown that birds and dinosaurs shared behaviors such as brooding and nest building. According to paleontologist and National Geographic grantee Jack Horner, it also stands to reason that dinosaurs had similar courting behaviors as today’s birds. Because various bird species tap-dance, moonwalk, and boogie to impress potential mates, it makes sense that dinosaurs did the same. Just imagine a giant T. rex with its tiny T. rex arms "twerking" its way into the heart of its intended. In this week’s Today I Learned, Horner explains how dinosaurs might have been the original smooth criminals.Read more about one species of Triceratops, Triceratops horridusAdditional footage provided by Cornell Lab of Ornithology