Post * 7mAZ — Curious Curator

› added 9 years ago

278

TIL that 71 years before Rosa Parks, Ida B. Wells refused to give up her seat on a train and was thrown off by a group of white men. She later cofounded the NAACP but was kept off the list of founders by W.E.B. Du Bois.

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VMQd0 TIL that only the outer layer of tree trunks are alive. The center of the trunk is technically dead but it will not decay or lose strength while the outer layers are intact. A piece of the dead core 12" long and 1" by 2" in cross section set vertically can support a weight of twenty tons.

JY6b8 TIL that ‘Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea’ refers not to depth, but distance travelled whilst submerged

VBl60 TIL stars larger than the sun fuse elements in a cycle where carbon, nitrogen, and oxygen atoms act as catalysts transforming into each other continuously. After a full cycle, the net result is 4 hydrogen atoms consumed and 1 helium atom released along with energy, at which point the cycle repeats.

Wbgo TIL that the new Toyota Mirai is one of the first fuel cell vehicles being sold commercially and uses hydrogen to run, while emitting water vapor.

YpWWd TIL Like an outsized fossil in the Sahara, the 30-mile diameter Richat Structure in Mauritania, originally interpreted as a meteorite impact, is a circular, eroded dome dating back to the splitting of Pangea.