› added 5 years ago

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TIL we can see the shadows of the capillaries in our eyes. Our brains just ignore them because they offer no useful information to us (kind of like how you don't see your nose unless you focus on it.) This is called the Troxler Effect. I linked a procedure you can follow to see the shadows yourself.

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XE7yR TIL there's a very large, clumsy, and flightless species of ground-dwelling Parrot in New Zealand called the Kakapo. Critically endangered, these turkey-sized, incredibly friendly and hopeless birds are mostly uninterested in mating, have no practical defenses, and often forget that they cannot fly.
7XLx TIL that trees in the red forest, a forest in the Chernobyl exclusion zone, are not decaying because organisms that recycle organic matter suffer from radiation as well.
VBOAG TIL there is a roadside attraction called "The Uranus Fudge Factory".
X00Er TIL that a third of the items returned to Amazon are simply destroyed in order to save time and space.
4Xbyb TIL wallets weren't used for carrying money and identification like they are now. They carried things like dried meats and "things to be unseen". It was also considered uncivilized to carry your wallet in your pocket up until the 20th century.