Post * P1bQw — Curious Curator

› added 2 years ago

671

TIL Thomas Thwaites converted himself into a goat for three days, getting the 2016 Ig Nobel Prize of Biology

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x6vak TIL that the average human body has about 75 pounds of edible meat.

QNX86 TIL that at the height of the Napoleonic wars, the British and French navies allowed ships carrying new rose varieties for Josephine Bonaparte to pass through the blockade

QxA6 TIL that newgrange in Ireland is older than both Stonehenge and the pyramids in Giza. On the morning of the winter solstice every year the rising sun shines down the entrance passageway and illuminates the burial chamber at the end. This only happens for a few minutes, once a year.

0w4xN TIL in Eastern European folklore, many vampires suffered from OCD, specifically having strong compulsions to count. Bags of rice or seed were often placed at graves to occupy them at night by couting the grains. This is where the inspiration for Count Von Count from Sesame Street came from.

awoGN TIL of the word "inkhorn", a 16th century derogrity term for scholars who excessively and awkwardly borrowed words from Latin. They introduced short-lived words like ("devulgate, obtestate, deruncinate, subsecive") but also gave us everday words like ("Celebrate, expectation, ingenious, mundane").