› added 7 years ago

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TIL the near-extinction bison hunting in the 1800s was not to gain food, but to restrict the American Indians’ dominant food supply; herds were shot from trains and left to rot where they died

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OoQQ7 TIL The ability to read mispelled words is not based only on the first and last letter of the word, but also on the overall context and many other psycholinguistic factors. The original meme that made this popular actually used very specific words to show the effect, but it fails for other words.
8a4N8 TIL that men have nipples because we all start out as females in the womb. By the time the Y chromosome distinguishes a fetus as male, the nipples have already formed.
699Om TIL Astronomer George Ellery Hale observed the sun in 1908 through a 60-foot solar telescope and documented the Zeeman effect in a sunspot. Hale’s photograph represented the first magnetic fields discovered outside of Earth
9YwbM TIL The most isolated tree on earth, The Ténéré Tree, was hit by a (probably) drunk driver in the middle of a desert.
nen7r TIL the "fresh is best" culture led consumers to wrongly see frozen produce as lower quality. It turns out frozen fruit & veg are equally nutritious. The freezing process slows nutrient loss which occurs after harvesting. Researchers found no real nutritional differences overall.