› added 3 years ago

78

TIL: The Mongol Empire once extended over an estimated 9.27 million square miles (24,000,000 km2), which is about 17.8% of Earth's total land area, almost 5x larger than 'Pax Romana' Rome.

Read more wikipedia.org

via reddit.com

NKXe TIL With over 4,700 species of frogs, only one (the Pacific Tree Frog) goes “RIBBIT”. Because Hollywood sound engineers recorded clips of local frogs for various films over the years, we associate the “RIBBIT” sound with frogs to this day.
yVGpX TIL Despite being located above the Arctic Circle, the Norwegian municipality of Tromso only has a record low temperature of -18.4°C (−1.1°F) Identical to the record low temperature in the subtropical US state of Florida
dn78 TIL a US cargo plane crashed while moving children from Vietnam. American businessman Robert Macauley heard that it would take over a week to evacuate the survivors, so he chartered a Boeing 747 and arranged for 300 orphaned children to leave the country, paying for the trip by mortgaging his house.
loyBG TIL King Minos of Crete was the first recorded user of a condom, made of sheep's bladder. This is because his semen was poisonous, he ejaculated "serpents and scorpions" that killed his wives and mistresses.
pwNG TIL Chile printed a number of 50 peso coins in 2008 that misspelled the name of their country as “Chiie”. No one noticed until 2009, at which point the director of the Mint lost his job.