Post * 9QlG — Curious Curator

› added 12 years ago

196

TIL that Americans are comparatively no more religious than the rest of the world. However, when polled on the matter, they are twice as likely to claim to be religious.

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4XmMb TIL that the Persian Empire counted how many soldiers in a battle died through counting the arrows that each soldier would place in a basket before a battle. When the soldiers came back, they each picked up an arrow and the remaining arrows would be counted to calculate the total amount of deaths

R59Q8 TIL that when mating, the female Serromyia biting midge (no-see-um) drives her tongue like a drill into the male's head, pumping him full of acid. His insides melt, and she sucks him dry. The male's genitals break off, blocking the female from future mating.

4kKXb TIL: a man named Ranald MacDonald was the first native English speaker to teach the English language in Japan. Today, statues commemorate Ronald McDonald all throughout Japan.

5v09 TIL that a carrot farmer trying to cut back food waste (over half of carrots produced are too ugly for grocery shelves) carved & created the first batch of ‘baby carrots’ using a green bean cutter. 30 years later, these carrots account for 70 percent of all carrot sales

e0B4L TIL The first man-made object to reach the stratosphere was a meter long shell fired from the Paris Gun, used by the Germans in WW1 to bombard Paris from 80 miles away. The curvature of the earth had to be considered when calculating where the shells would land.