› added 2 years ago

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TIL: Between approx 1.000.000 and 560.000 years ago there were hippopotamus roaming Europe. The Hippopotamus antiquus ranged from the Iberian Peninsula to the British Isles to the Rhine River to Greece.

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rNN7W TIL the 4 spikes on the end of a stegosaurus is called a Thagomizer
GYdLQ TIL the main cause of "soft errors" in computer memory is cosmic rays. Systems buried in caves have a negligible rate of cosmic-ray induced soft errors; computers on mountains have a far higher error rate than at sea level; and the rate of errors in aircraft can be over 300 times the sea level rate
wLpv1 TIL That some bacteria have tiny magnetic crystals that help them avoid oxygen by sensing the earth's magnetic field.
K8oE TIL there are artists who add monsters to thrift store paintings, turning boring idyllic scenes into incredible action-packed portraits
a8MBZ TIL about the Tartarian Empire theory, which posits that Tartary– an archaic European phrase for Asia– was actually an advanced lost civilization that was wiped out via global "mud floods." Historical architecture across the world is claimed to represent remnants of the empire.