› added 4 years ago

60

Today I learned the Cornus Florida is the state tree for Virginia and Missouri, but not Florida.

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via reddit.com

v1a7r TIL that Pluto was not only named after the god of the underworld, but the first two letters were a homage to Percival Lowell, the scientist who initiated the search for a celestial body beyond Neptune.
m7YE TIL: the bikini swimsuit was named after the nuclear explosions that destroyed Bikini island. The inventor wanted to imply the bikini was as momentous an invention as the new bomb. This was a time when beautiful women were “bombshells” and anything cool was “atomic.”
x60Gw TIL Ireland holds the world’s highest frequency (~10–11%) of C282Y, a gene variant in hereditary hemochromatosis. Historically, poor diets from poverty, heavy tea, and reliance on potatoes favored iron-boosting. Now, iron-fortified foods can cause overload, leading to harmful excess body iron levels
b6YQp TIL that Daryl Hall made his first solo album with Robert Fripp of King Crimson and RCA hated it so much they shelved it for 3 years.
ROLj TIL Ralph Wiggum was not canonically made to be Chief Wiggum’s son until season 4. The two characters were developed independently and only later the writers decided to make them father and son.