› added 10 years ago

463

TIL Japanese Honeybees will lure Giant Hornets into their hive. Once inside the honeybees will signal each other to swarm the hornet and then proceed to vibrate, raising the temperature up to 116° F (47° C). The honeybees can tolerate the heat but the Giant Hornet cant and is literally cooked alive.

Read more livescience.com

via reddit.com

LQlVZ TIL: "Jumbo" was a male African bush elephant who was an attraction for PT Barnum. He was hit by a train in St. Thomas, Ontario and died. He was not named Jumbo because of his size; we got the word "jumbo" because of his name.
dDReZ TIL that Canada has the most freshwater lakes in the world, more than the rest of the world combined.
gKQD TIL the longest golf drive ever recorded goes to Russian astronaut Mike Lopez-Alegria. In 2004 he used a 6-iron to strike a ball one-handed while tethered to the International Space Station. NASA predicts the ball will fly approximately 1 million miles before disintegrating into Earth’s atmosphere.
b6lx0 TIL that the Great Vowel Shift between 1400-1700 was a series of pronunciation changes in English. With that many words froze with spelling and pronunciations not matching. This is why some English vowels are a mess with words like "meat" and "meet" being spelt differently but pronounced the same.
78M4L TIL the "Triple Crown" of Motorsports includes the Indianapolis 500, Monaco Grand Prix, and 24 Hours of Le Mans—British driver Graham Hill is the only driver to complete the Triple Crown in history.