› added 6 years ago

815

TIL platypuses, gila monsters, and cone snails use insulin as venom (and are being studied as sources of diabetes treatments)

Read more bbc.com

via reddit.com

r874 TIL that a 1992 graduate thesis in Mathematics at the University of British Columbia proved that it was mathematically impossible to play an infinite game of Tetris.
kdym TIL in 1623, the German polymath Wilhelm Schickard designed what was probably the first mechanical digital computer. Schickard died of bubonic plague soon, but his machine was replicated later and is likely to have worked in spite of some imperfections.
e0945 TIL Viggo Mortensen would not have taken the part of Aragorn in LOTR had it not been for his 11 year old son's enthusiasm for the books. He performed his own stunts insisting he used a real steel sword and he also purchased the two horses, whom he rode and bonded with over the duration of the films.
nkgr TIL that a woman named Rifca Stanescu became the world’s youngest grandmother at the age of 23. Rifca, from the Romanian town of Investi, was 12 years old when she gave birth to her daughter, Maria. Maria, in turn, had her first child, her son Ion, at age 11.
engn TIL that the movie Akeelah and the Bee was produced by Starbucks.