› added 5 years ago

295

TIL at the dawn of the dinosaurs 250 million years ago, the day was on 23 hours long.

Read more spacemath.gsfc.nasa.gov

via reddit.com

xVMA1 TIL Poison Ivy doesn't actually spread when scratched and is not contagious. The reason it creates the illusion of doing so is because different parts of the body absorb the oil at different speeds.
Yx0Z TIL in Poker, Anna Kournikova is the name for A-K starting hand. So called because “it looks great but doesn’t win anything”.
DP7j TIL the US gas guzzler tax that was designed to discourage fuel-inefficient vehicles only applies to cars, but not SUVs, trucks, and vans, since they were rarely used as passenger cars when the law was passed in 1978. The law has since not been updated to reflect modern times.
kJAY7 TIL cigarettes were invented by Spanish beggars in Seville in the 16th century, who gathered cigar stubs and rolled the leftover tobacco in paper (papeletes) into cigarettes (cigarrillos). Cigarettes acquired respectability by the late 18th century and their use spread by Portugese traders
JYO1V TIL that religion was a controversial topic in the 1960 election, with JFK as the first Catholic candidate (still the only Catholic US President to date) against Protestant Nixon, due to the anti-Catholic sentiment at the time.