› added 8 years ago

490

TIL that the summit of Mount Everest is not the farthest point from the center of the Earth. Due to the Earth’s bulge around the equator it is actually the volcano called Chimborazo in Ecuador.

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M71GW TIL that the manta ray has the biggest brain and by far the biggest brain-to-mass ratio of any fish and is one of the few animals in the world that may pass the "mirror test" for self-recognition.
QNn16 TIL in the 1950s, the CIA exploited Filipino vampire myths to instill fear in villages, killing a man, marking him with bite wounds, and hanging him upside down. This was part of efforts to help elect Ramon Magsaysay, a U.S. backed president.
nGb9 TIL that one of the largest bats in the world, the golden-capped fruit bat, with a wingspan of 5.6 feet, does not posses echolocation. It instead relies on its keen senses of sight and smell to locate food, usually traveling more than 25 miles for it. The species is now facing extinction.
4aoo TIL that Warren Buffett got so mad that his son’s adopted daughter appeared on the documentary “The One Percent” that he disowned her and sent her a letter that said she had “never been considered a real family member” and had “not been legally or emotionally adopted” by him.
PYwXJ TIL that Dark Energy is calculated to make up 67% of the known universe, while Dark Matter makes up a further 27%, while what we can actually see and measure, conventional matter, makes up less than 5% of our universe. "Dark Energy" is really a placeholder for "we don't know what this is."