› added 7 years ago

157

TIL that toothpicks kill nearly as many people every year as sharks do.

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via reddit.com

evx5 TIL that the English language evolves so rapidly in the United States that is possible to roughly estimate one’s age simply based on whether they say “on accident” or “by accident”
WZNN TIL: Three soviet engineers volunteered their lives at Chernobyl to release water from the broken reactor. Had they not done this, the resulting fallout would have covered most of Europe. All three men died within two weeks.
O15R TIL that Maurice Sendak based the monsters in “Where the Wild Things Are” on his Eastern European immigrant relatives, who scared him with their unkempt hair and bad teeth.
69pjZ TIL the discovery of quinine as a treatment for malaria played a significant role in the colonization of Africa by Europeans and the prime reason Africa ceased to be known as the "white man's grave".
b6YK0 TIL Jack Black’s mother was an engineer for NASA who worked the problem of getting the Apollo 13 astronauts home while she was in labor.