› added 9 years ago

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TIL that the idiom “the cat’s out of the bag” is derived from a practice by some merchants who sold piglets in bags. If the buyer was distracted, the merchant would quickly switch the piglet w/ a cat. The buyer wouldn’t realize until they got home and let the cat, and not a piglet, out of the bag.

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WMrN TIL: Female black bears delay the implantation of their fertilized eggs for months, effectively timing when they will give birth, and aborting the pregnancy if they are not healthy enough to rear cubs
N7jpb TIL it is against the rules in the Boy Scouts for a Scout leader to email a kid unless they also send a copy to the parents or another Scout leader.
D1a4v TIL lightning can heat the surrounding air to as hot as 50,000 °F, three time hotter than the surface of the sun. As the super heated air cools, it produces a particular vacuum. The rapid contraction and expansion of this air is what causes thunder.
WMB TIL there are no KFCs in Tibet in part because the Dalai Lama wrote them a letter explaining how the mass slaughter of chickens violated Tibet’s traditional values.
lrZK TIL that a man was killed by a lava lamp in 2004, when he chose to heat the glass section via stove. The lamp built up so much pressure that it exploded, and a piece of glass shot through his heart.