› added 5 years ago

221

TIL The tongue twister 'She Sells Seashells' is actually about Mary Anning, a geologist who in 1823 got people talking about extinction, geologic ages, and evolution 36 years before Charles Darwin wrote 'The Origin Of Species'. Darwin later wrote about Anning's accomplishments in 1856.

D1drp TIL about Polish-American painter and sculptor Stanisław Szukalski, who claimed to have dissected his father’s body following a car accident to study its form. The artist, who refused to work from live models, was often asked where he learned anatomy. He always answered, "My father taught me".
0wW6N TIL that the title of Pantera's 1992 album "Vulgar Display of Power" was inspired by a line in "The Exorcist". When Father Karras asks Regan why she can't make the straps restraining her disappear if she's supposedly the devil, she replies, "That's much too vulgar a display of power, Karras."
BWZx TIL that J.R.R. Tolkien constructed over 20 languages, each with its own unique grammar and vocabulary.
jNylj TIL the carpet shark, native to the northern Australian coast, is a long, slender shark that tends to be creamy or brown with variously-sized dark spots. They forage for food in tidal pools and risk being stranded, but they can survive for an hour without oxygen or simply walk back to the ocean.
jpPX TIL The fertilizer used by the Tobacco Industry is radioactive. The plant absorbs it and the smoker inhales it. It gets lodged in the lungs and over time contributes a huge radiation dose to the smoker and could be factor in lung cancer.