› added 11 years ago

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TIL that the word quarantine is derived from the days of the Black Plague when ships entering Venice were forced to anchor offshore for forty (or quaranta in Italian) days before being permitted to unload

Read more cdc.gov

via reddit.com

xVgA0 TIL that the decision to kill Susan on Seinfeld wasn't made until there were scenes with her, Jerry, Elaine, and Kramer. Jason Alexander, George, had claimed she was hard to act with before then, but no one believed him until they experienced it themselves.
nWJQb TIL Air Force One has had more takeoffs than landings. When Gerald Ford was sworn in, the aircraft SAM 27000 was airborne with Nixon onboard. As a result, the callsign changed from Air Force One to SAM 27000 mid-flight.
0wrwv TIL a library in Herculaneum was burned and buried in 79 AD when Mt. Vesuvius erupted. For 250+ years, scholars have been unrolling/attempting to decipher recovered manuscripts from the only antiquarian library ever recovered. The site was never fully excavated; it is assumed more are still buried.
ADGkl TIL Honduran white bats (Ectophylla alba) or Caribbean white tent-making bats, create their own daytime sleeping quarters by using their teeth to cut the ribs of large leaves causing them to fold down to form a tent. They appear as white puffballs when they gather in groups.The bats mostly eat figs.
YrZ TIL that during World War Two a German plane landed at a British airfield thinking it was a German one.