› added 4 years ago

286

TIL: In 1989 Bangladesh, a single tornado killed approx. 1,300 people with 12,000 injured. The Daulatpur Saturia tornado was the deadliest tornado in history.

4jP5 TIL In the 1960s, the sugar industry paid three Harvard scientists $50,000 to say that heart disease was most likely caused by saturated fat. After their report was published in JAMA, diets concentrating on low fat gained the endorsement of many health authorities.
oRDlW TIL that Italian operas used to include an unimportant song sung by a side character to give the audience a last chance to get up a buy snacks while they were singing. These songs were called sorbet arias since sorbet was commonly sold at opera houses.
6907l TIL about the thick-tailed pygmy jerboa, a species of rodent found in China, Kazakhstan, and Mongolia. They have a head and body length of around 4.5-6 cm, are described as having a large head with small eyes, and live in permanent burrows with multiple passages that can extend for 3 m.
yQJw8 TIL that if you add 250ml of ethanol to 250ml of water, you get less than 500ml of liquid. This is due to strong hydrogen bonding that draws the different molecules close together, and because ethanol interferes with any open structures in the water, causing the molecules to pack closer together.
9Y4xX TIL There was a pornographic video game for the Atari 2600 called Beat 'Em & Eat 'Em. Players control two nude women; the goal is to catch semen in their mouths, which is falling from a masturbating man on a rooftop, without missing.