› added 8 years ago

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TIL There’s a brewery in Germany that’s almost 1,000 years old. It has been in continuous operation since the year 1040

VnK4 TIL with inflation the Ford Model T would only cost $5600 today, $6300 LESS than the cheapest new car in US.
p8Ym8 Imagine you spent your entire childhood, teenage years, and young adulthood stuck inside a small closet. One day, after much of your life, has passed you by, you realize that you can just open up the door, change into some more appropriate clothes, and hit the town! Free at last, what would you do first? Maybe sing a bit? Go on a few dates? By the way, you have two to four weeks to live. Yikes. This is not unlike the situation most cicadas face, as they spend almost their entire lives underground. For example, many of the cicadas emerging in 2016 have been underground for 17 years! To put that in perspective, the last Star Wars movie these insects saw was literally a menace. Imagine waking up in a world without Smash Mouth and Sugar Ray! Come to think of it, things are really looking up since 1999. A cicada’s ear-piercing call is intended to attract a gal pal. Considering that these little creatures’ time above ground is so fleeting, they need to lock down a date as soon as possible. This could be why most cicadas are louder than the average fraternity pledge. Adult males are the ones making such a racket, and some species can register sounds louder 100 decibels when calling for a potential mate. In this week’s Today I Learned, National Geographic Emerging Explorer and filmmaker Sandesh Kadur explains how cicadas sing such a loud song.
vkaj TIL America’s first female self-made millionaire was a black woman
vAX7 TIL of Frank Durrant, a WW2 British Commando who, while shot 16 times and in Command of a small wooden boat - Took on a German Destroyer so ferociously the German captain recommended to the British Army he was awarded the Victoria Cross. He was.
O9k7 TIL Black Sabbath’s Iron Man is about a man who goes to the future and sees the destruction of the world. When returning to his own time to warn people he is turned into iron and thus mocked. He decides to destroy the world bringing about the end he tried to prevent.