› added 1 year ago

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TIL that to protect bumblebees, the California Endangered Species Act (1984) classified bumblebees as fish, on the grounds that the definition of fish included the term "invertebrate", which bumblebees also are.

LkwkQ TIL India has used 3 time zones in the past - Bombay, Madras and Calcutta, with Madras time zone (being in between the other two) used by the railways all around the country. Neither of them had the arbitrary UTC+X(.5) time offset. The present day IST is closest to the Madras time.
e0ePk TIL that a mass grave was found in Ireland containing the bones of 796 infants.
e0LLD TIL the unit of speed the knot, used extensively throughout the world in aviation, weather, and nautical contexts, comes from literal knots of the "common log" device. This 17th century device was a coil of rope with uniformly spaced knots, attached to a piece of wood shaped like a slice of pie.
W7wVN TIL the youngest recorded death at the Golden Gate Bridge was five-year-old Marilyn DeMont, in 1945. Her father commanded her to jump before he followed by diving after her. A simple note was found in the DeMont car stating, "I and my daughter have committed suicide."
OkN7 TIL that a medical device company illegally tested a bone cement on patients killing at least 5 when the cement was injected into their spines and leaked into blood vessels causing massive clots in their hearts and lungs. Company executives received prison sentences of less than a year each.