› added 12 years ago

171

TIL that humans and domesticated animals now outweigh all wild terrestrial vertebrates by an order of magnitude.

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via reddit.com

JYOxB TIL: "Semantic satiation" is a psychological phenomenon in which repetition causes a word or phrase to temporarily lose meaning for the listener, who then perceives the speech as repeated meaningless sounds
05dR TIL the magnitude 9.0 great earthquake that struck Japan on 11 March 2011 “was so powerful that its rumble was ‘heard’ from space. Scientists in France and the Netherlands have found that sound waves from the quake reached as far as an orbiting satellite [GOCE], 260 kilometres [161.6 miles] above.”
PYgDE TIL that according to astronauts, space smells like a strange mixture of charred meat and raspberries.
QB8X TIL Insects Are More Closely Related to Lobsters and Crabs Than They Are to Centipedes and Millipedes
4QDJ TIL “Living room” what we call today, was actually called “Death room” in the 19th century, as it was the place where deceased family members were laid out for final respects, it was the time when many funerals were still taking place at home.