› added 4 years ago

101

TIL of a population of Russian brown bears which appear to have become addicted to huffing gas fumes. The bears will sniff the fumes and then dig a shallow hole to lie down in.

yLev TIL that there is a growing problem with keeping parrots as pets. As they are not domesticated, and their lifespan can be up to 70+ years, thousands are abandoned over the years. Incidentally, this problem increased when more people wanted to have an intelligent parrot like Alex as a pet.
nWBmB TIL Richard Dedekind, who worked with Georg Cantor on infinite sets, was an exceptional mathematician but he never went beyond being a high school teacher in his hometown. Cantor wanted to enter University of Berlin but was prevented from doing so as his new branch of mathematics was rejected
VBLr0 TIL before World War II, not many married Western men wore wedding rings. During the war though, married men who were serving in the military started to wear them to remind themselves of their wives and families back home, and it became much more common.
eJon TIL the Romans loved Chinese silk so much that the Senate banned its wearing by men in 14 A.D. It was hurting the economy as way too much silk was being imported and not enough of other stuff, like iron.
GY4OG TIL the US Navy placed a top secret tap on a Russian underwater communications cable in the Sea of Okhotsk after finding the cables' location was marked by signs along the remote Siberian shoreline saying "No anchoring - underwater cable".