› added 12 years ago

100

TIL the musician Moby is the great-great-great-grandnephew of Herman Melville, the author of Moby Dick

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kODd1 TIL chemists have developed two plant-based plastic alternatives to the current fossil fuel made plastics. Using chemical recycling instead of mechanical recycling, 96% of the initial material can be recovered.
N7pJ6 TIL about Rebecca Huger, an 11-year-old emancipated slave girl who posed for patriotic photos with the U.S. flag; the photos were sold to raise money for the education of freed slaves in New Orleans. "To all appearance she [was] perfectly white," like her father/former owner.
p5ep TIL that months after Genghis Khan sacked Zhongdu (Beijing) in 1215, the bones of the vanquished were thought to be white-capped mountains from a distance, and the approaching roads were nearly impassable from the grease of decomposing victims.
wXVM TIL there is a Buddhist temple in Thailand constructed of an estimated 1.5 million beer bottles
b6kV9 TIL about 21% of beef in the US comes from culled dairy cows, sold for slaughter at around age 5 when their milk production drops off. This culling increases profitability and so subsidizes the cost of the milk production.