› added 2 years ago

104

TIL there are an estimated 50 Billion birds in the world

Read more thayerbirding.com

via reddit.com

VxlB TIL King Henry VIII was once arrested and then imprisoned for assaulting a police constable with his walking stick. When the police constable was informed he had jailed the King of England, he feared execution; instead he was commended by Henry VIII for his dedication to duty.
rnr0 TIL in 2013 the Minnesota Court of Appeals revoked a man’s license after he repeatedly ignored warnings from law enforcement that he was driving too slowly on two-lane highways. He told a lower court judge that 48 mph is his Ford Ranger pickup truck’s “sweet spot” for gas mileage.
awVdy TIL about “The Great Filter”, a theoretically point in evolution that only a minuscule fraction of species could evolve past. This may explain why we have never contacted other high functioning species. Also, we do not know if humans have yet to reach it, or have already passed it.
E10RX TIL the Ebola Virus should be called Yambuku fever, since that was the village in Zaire where it was identified in 1976 by Peter Piot, a Belgian scientist. Piot decided to name it after the river Ebola, 60 miles from Yambuku, to avoid stigmatizing the village by giving its name to a deadly disease.
nWGGb TIL between 1969 and 1977, 95 African oryx (a type of large antelope) were released in southern New Mexico. There are now thousands of them in the state and that number continues go grow.