› added 9 years ago

226

TIL a Narwhals tusk is actually it’s left tooth which breaks through its lip. It is soft, and covered with small holes that fill with water and basically make the tusk a sensory organ, like a nose or ears.

Read more techtimes.com

via reddit.com

Y7vAW TIL green coloured clothing was rare in Europe up until arsenic-based green dyes were invented in the late-1700s. Before that, to create green the fabric first had to be dyed yellow and then dyed again with an expensive blue dye. Results with this process were inconsistent & hard to control.
XK1k TIL that several European countries dealt with their rabies problem by air-dropping vaccinated chicken heads for wild foxes to eat.
GYnmN TIL that in 1823, an Italian naturalist invented a process for petrifying fresh human cadavers. Accused of practicing Black magic, he burned all his notes. To this day, no one is sure how he did it.
PZ4e TIL Peter O'Toole found his camel saddle uncomfortable while filming Lawrence of Arabia, so he put a piece of foam rubber under it. The film’s Bedouin extras saw this and copied it, and today the practice has spread to become Bedouin tradition. They call O’Toole “Father of the Sponge”.
a5w0 TIL that the man who designed Saddam Hussein’s bunker was the grandson of the woman who designed Adolf Hitler’s bunker.