› added 3 years ago

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TIL That fungi are growing on the walls of Chernobyl's ruined nuclear reactor. They seem to absorb radiation and convert it into chemical energy for growth.

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D1bbJ TIL that word boondock come from Tagalog bundok ‘mountain.’ American soldiers stationed in the Philippines adopted the word in the early 1900s, shifting the meaning to refer to "an isolated or wild region."
8a0JV TIL Ed Sullivan asked Buddy Holly to not play his song “Oh Boy” on his show because it was too suggestive. Holly refused, so Sullivan mispronounced Holly’s name and cut the feed from his guitar. The band was still a huge hit. When asked back again, Holly said Sullivan didn’t have enough money.
QJ66 TIL hog-nosed snakes will feign death by rolling on their back, and when rolled upright will roll back again as if to insist they’re really dead.
4Xv4N TIL scientists searching for an explanation for an unusually cool area of sky instead discovered a 'supervoid'; an empty spherical blob 1.8 billion light years across that is the largest object in the known universe. An estimated 10,000 galaxies were “missing” from the part of the sky it sits in.
PYGJn TIL the man responsible for beheading and cannibalizing another man on a bus in Canada was released in 2015 and currently living free.