› added 9 years ago

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TIL that the estimated number of individual insects currently hopping, crawling or flying around our planet at any given moment is about 10 quintillion, meaning there are about 2 billion insects for every human being.

Read more animals.howstuffworks.com

via reddit.com

8arY8 TIL the record-holder as the USSR's most productive and competent worker had his name misspelled in the state newspaper. The bureaucracy officially changed his name to match rather than admit their mistake.
BgLdb TIL that the cloth placed over the backs of chairs in buses and planes is called "antimacassar" and it has its name from Macassar oil used for greasing hair back in 19th century. The cloth was there to protect the furniture from it.
VMLp8 TIL Ella Fitzgerald forgot the lyrics of "Mack The Knife" during a live performance in Berlin. She improvised after the first stanza and won a Grammy for the recording in 1961.
VBMQp TIL that the original Rock Island Bridge was laid under a surveying party led by Robert E. Lee. When a steamboat collision happened, the bridge operators hired Abraham Lincoln to their defense.
vP5EL TIL that in 1972 Scottish professional football club Dundee United played a series of friendly games in Nigeria in which they only managed to win one of them. The club's performances shocked the locals so much that "Dundee United" or just "Dundee" is now used as slang to mean "idiot" in Nigeria