› added 4 years ago

125

TIL the founder of Barbie named the dolls after her kids, Barbara and Kenneth. Therefore, the real Barbie and Ken are actually brother and sister.

Read more barbie.mattel.com

via reddit.com

KOAyG TIL about Emperor Pedro II of Brazil who was an avid supporter of science education and a respected intellectual in his own right. Charles Darwin himself said that “The Emperor does so much for science, that every scientific man is bound to show him the utmost respect.”
ANoQd TIL The Crypt of Civilization is a time capsule room that was sealed in 1940 and won't be opened until the year 8113.
GAZb7 TIL that American mathematician Frank Nelson Cole spent "three years of Sundays" factoring 147,573,952,589,676,412,927.
rPYe TIL of “aerial reforestation” - a process whereby conical canisters which contain a seedling packed in soil and nutrients are dropped from a plane. They could drop as many as 100,000 saplings in a single flight. The system could plant as many as a million trees in one day.
9wvmM TIL that in 1984, an elephant in a German zoo killed 3 hippos by opening a water valve while playing and thus filling their pool with 55°C hot water. The water generated steam that interfered with their breathing, and the hippos (two adults and one baby) died of shock.