› added 5 years ago

97

TIL an albatross can fly for 10,000 miles without landing, and is the only extant bird that can reach those numbers

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v1Zr4 TIL that a crowd of 500 Northern civilians tried to watch the First Battle of Bull Run. Among them was a US congressman. He was close enough to the battle that, during the Union retreat, he was captured by Confederate infantry. Upon his release, he wrote a best-selling book about his imprisonment.
MePbK TIL that the higher pitched voice we use when talking to dogs and pets is called "dog-directed speech" and may actually serve a purpose.
OoAEX TIL that the element Cobalt gets its name from a trickster goblin of German folklore, the kobold, because when medieval miners discovered it and tried to smelt it thinking it was silver, it released toxic gasses they believed to be the goblin playing a trick on them.
kJ8p1 TIL Gorillaz famous "Clint Eastwood" riff is just a preset in Damon Albarn's omnichord
9YeMM TIL in 1896, a bubоnіc plаgue epіdеmic struck Bombay, and the government asked Waldemar Haffkine, developer of the first chоlera vаccіne, to help. After 3 months of persistent work (1 assistant had a nervous breakdown and 2 others quit), a vаccіne was ready, with Haffkine tеsting it on himself first