› added 12 years ago

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TIL: Like many deep-sea cephalopods, vampire squid lack ink sacs. If threatened, instead of ink, a sticky cloud of bioluminescent mucus containing innumerable orbs of blue light is ejected from the arm tips.

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m1eYP TIL the trash chute in the luxury Manhattan skyscraper at 432 Park Ave is an uninterrupted 1400 foot drop. Trash dropped from the upper floors falls at speeds reaching 170 mph (274 kph). Residents of the billion-plus dollar building complain that trash bags hitting bottom sound like bombs going off.
W7g99 TIL: The Pinky Swear or the Pinky Promise has origins in Japan from 1600 where it is called yubikiri "finger cut-off" and often additionally confirmed with the vow "Pinky swear, whoever lies will be made to swallow a thousand needles"
4X6Lb Around 74,000 years ago, the Toba supervolcano erupted on the Indonesian island of Sumatra. It was the biggest volcanic eruption of the last 2 million years, unleashing 2,800 cubic kilometres of magma. That’s enough to bury the entire United States in a foot-thick layer of ash & rock.
9OD6 TIL During a major Civil War battle, both armies briefly stopped fighting to watch a fist fight between two opposing soldiers who had both taken cover in the same place.
oRbE TIL that Donald Rumsfeld ordered a study in 2004 on the cause of terrorism. The findings: “Muslims do not ‘hate our freedom,’ but rather, they hate our policies… specifically American direct intervention in the Muslim world and support for Islamic tyrannies in places like Egypt and Saudi Arabia.”