› added 4 years ago

90

TIL that it was illegal for Americans to own gold (except for some jewelry and collectors coins) between 1933 and 1975.

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Ood6R TIL the pyramids weren't built by slaves but paid workers, who often left graffiti on unexposed areas of the pyramids identifying their crews, like "The Drunkards of Menkaure"
dgg7 TIL the human retina is actually brain tissue, you see with an exposed part of your brain.
p8r7N TIL Nowadays a slave costs about $90 on average worldwide compared to $40,000 in 1850, an average cost in the American South.
Gp5E TIL that groups of human beings, left free to each regulate themselves, tend to produce spontaneous order, rather than meaningless chaos
m1aEv TIL frogs can see individual photons, the smallest possible particles of light. Even the faintest sources like distant stars appear as individual points of light not as a continuous stream but as separate flashes. To test it single photons were fired at photoreceptor cells triggering a nerve impulse