› added 6 years ago

273

TIL scientists attached stilts to the legs of ants to prove that they return to their nests by counting their steps. The ants with stilts overshot their nest by roughly 50% due to the new length of their steps.

Read more animals.howstuffworks.com

via reddit.com

pOw4 TIL Walt Disney’s staff once presented him with a cartoon on his birthday depicting Snow White having sex with the seven dwarfs. Disney applauded at the film’s ingenuity and casually wondered who was responsible. When the blushing illustrators identified themselves, Disney fired them.
weZ6 TIL that three bodies were found in a storage room on the USS West Virginia when she was re-floated after Pearl Harbor. A calendar kept by the men indicated that they had survived for over two weeks after the attack.
1ave7 TIL that helium is the only substance that can't freeze. Instead, once it reaches a temperature below it's melting point, it turns into a superfluid with zero friction.
D1r9Y TIL "The Present" begins January 1st, 1950. For radiocarbon dating, identifying anything after this date is unreliable due to the skewering of Carbon-12 and Carbon-14 that detonating nuclear devices in our atmosphere has caused.
DQPlP TIL: parcel delivery with USPS began on January 1st, 1913. The very first parcel ever delivered was 11 pounds of apples to New Jersey governor (and President-Elect) Woodrow Wilson