› added 6 years ago

211

TIL That Roosters have evolved to not deafen themselves with their own loud crowing. The auditory canal closes as they open their mouths, preventing any hearing damage. This evolution does not appear on hens.

Read more sciencedirect.com

via reddit.com

166ND TIL there was an exponential increase in childhood cancer in Mexico due to the purchase of tons of milk from Ireland, which were contaminated due to the radioactivity caused by the 1986 Chernobyl accident.
DWVv TIL in 1991 the tallest structure in the world at the time (a radio tower in Poland) collapsed due to poor maintenance. No structure exceeded the height of the collapsed Warsaw Radio Tower until the Bujr Khalifa was completed in Dubai nearly two decades later.
KpZ6 TIL- that an octopuses most rigid body parts are its eyes and if it can fit its eye through a hole it can fit its entire body through it
p8A08 TIL that in "Take Me Home, Country Roads," the ode to West Virginia , the Shenandoah River is one of two place names mentioned. But the Shenandoah spends only its sixteen final miles in West Virginia. The rest--about 230 miles of main stem and combined North and South Forks--is in Virginia.
wLLW1 Because most early rotary engines turned counterclockwise (from the front, clockwise from the pilot's view). The physics of rotating objects resulted in left turns being easier than right turns. That led to standard manoeuvres using left turns. And that resulted in the prime/most experienced pilot sitting with a view out of the left window, once airplanes grew large enough to have side-by-side pilots.