› added 1 year ago

38

TIL that the 2020 Beirut explosion left approximately 300,000 people homeless.

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yQbGV TIL Spiders don't have muscles in their legs. They extend them using a system of hydraulics powered by their blood pressure. When they die, spiders' legs curl up because the blood pressure is gone.
vWE4 TIL the US tried to make cat guided bombs during WWII to hit enemy ships. The hope was that the cat would see the ship as “dry land” and steer the bomb to the target, in an effort to avoid getting wet. The project was abandoned because the cats would lose consciousness in the low G conditions.
d8kR8 TIL that Earth has about three TRILLION trees, or about 420 trees per person. There are more trees on earth than there are cells in a human brain or stars in our galaxy.
4MBJ TIL The Finnish military once repulsed a massive invasion by the Soviet Union, with a million men and thousands of tanks. The Finnish had just a few dozen tanks and only 114 airplanes, but destroyed more than 3,500 of the Russian tanks, and caused 323,000 total casualties to the Russian force.
OG651 TIL The Burpee exercise was invented by Royal Huddleston Burpee Sr. as a fitness test while completing his Ph.D. in the 1930