Post * BraDb — Curious Curator

› added 7 years ago

432

TIL weasles are theorized to hypnotize their prey by doing a strange 'war dance'

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nWvR9 TIL there's another unit to measure temperature, the Rankine scale (°R)

rJP4 TIL the “Loony Gas Building” was the name given to an old Standard Oil plant in 1924 after every single man who worked there was hospitalized for insanity… 5 of which died. The plant was manufacturing a new, breakthrough product: leaded gasoline additive.

9Y9A7 TIL Babylonians were using a rudimentary form of calculus to calculate Jupiter’s displacement each day along the ecliptic, the path that the sun appears to trace through the stars. Historians had thought such techniques did not emerge until more than 1400 years later, in 14th century Europe.

kOJQe TIL that the ADE 651; an inert rod of metal with a plastic hinge, was sold as a bomb detector. It was used by the militaries of Iraq, Afghanistan and more than a dozen other countries for years before anyone noticed that it did nothing at all.

X0wk6 TIL that there is only one validated living man born before 1913, and only eight born before 1914.