› added 4 years ago

185

When humans see purple, we’re really seeing a blend of red and blue light. Hummingbirds see purple plus ultraviolet—and lots of other nonspectral colors. A new study found that the birds could see every nonspectral color that the researchers threw at them.

Read more arstechnica.com

N8VE TIL that Jimmy Carter played a major role in eliminating guinea-worm disease - a parasite that is drank, and then burrows out of your body in the form of a worm.
LkyZp TIL: The Beggar's Opera written in 1728 was accused of being a "base form of entertainment". Similar to the way we blame videogames today; the opera was blamed for increasing crime rates and violence, due to the fact that its main characters were prisoners.
ADwJl TIL Every Easter in the Czech Republic boys get willow branches, braid them together into whips and decorate them with ribbons to whip girls with for luck and fertility. The word for this whip in Czech is pomlázka, which has also become the name of the tradition itself.
nxRr TIL that cheese can be addictive, as it contains trace amounts of naturally occuring morphine, that comes from the cow’s liver
pNEG TIL the reason Morton salt has the little girl with the umbrella as their logo is because Morton discovered that adding magnesium carbonate to table salt made it pour more freely and not clump up, even in humid or rainy weather. Hence their slogan, “When it rains, it pours. ”