› added 13 years ago

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TIL an Australian teen actually rode a whale and then got in trouble for it

Read more news.discovery.com

via reddit.com

0wwZR TIL before the electric telegraph, there was a system called the semaphore telegraph, where signals were communicated visually using a network of towers topped with pivoting blades and paddles that could be rearranged to indicate different symbols
VPA4 TIL that Coelacanths were thought to be extinct since the cretaceous period, yet they were discovered alive in 1938
QNWgd TIL sleep helps clean our brain. Or in the words of the journal Science, “Observations showed that when mice sleep, channels between neurons in their brains expand, allowing cerebrospinal fluid to flush out detritus, such as proteins that in human beings are associated with Alzheimer’s disease.”
J1J8l TIL there was a town in Austria named "Fucking" for over 800 years until 2020 when they they decided to change it to something less provocative due to all the non-stop jokes
b9mOp TIL that the first recorded use of Forensic Entomology was by Chinese detective in 1200s AD. In a murder investigation in a village, detective Song Ci put every scythe in the village for inspection and found the culprit when flies- attracted to trace amounts of blood- kept landing on his scythe.