› added 5 years ago

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TIL that sea toads are deep-sea dwellers that have special fins for walking on the seafloor. They also have massive, inflatable gill chambers that expand their bodies with seawater, allowing them to take up more oxygen and protect themselves by puffing up just as pufferfish do.

Read more fisheries.noaa.gov

via reddit.com

P88G TIL that the term “soft drink” used to refer to any beverage that did not contain hard alcohol, but that most carbonated beverages actually contain minute amounts of alcohol due to fermentation of the sugars.
yVoXv TIL a US train company plans to connect major Northeast metropolitan hubs, including a one-hour service from DC to NYC, with the world's fastest high-speed trains (operational speed of 310 mph - 500 km/h)
RBml TIL that Tom Hanks in Castaway allowed himself to gain weight to fit the role of a middle-aged man. Production was then halted for a year so he could lose 50 pounds and grow out his hair for his time spent on the island. During the hiatus, Robert Zemeckis used the same crew for What Lies Beneath.
ep4mJ TIL Joseph Kerwin was the first American physician to go to space and had the first chance to study space medicine. Ready on Skylab with a minor surgery kit and drugs, a dislocated finger was the most serious ailment any of the three astronauts experienced when he was there
DQKwr TIL there was a math question on the 1982 SAT that every single test taker got wrong. The question was so paradoxical that the creators were confused and didn’t include the actual answer as part of the selection. All 300,000 exams had to be rescored.