› added 8 years ago

230

TIL the Gowanus Canal in Brooklyn, NYC is so polluted that unidentifiable new forms of microbiological life have arisen in its sludge

Read more wikipedia.org

via ift.tt

awxoM TIL The Agathis species of coniferous trees was mostly wiped out in the dinosaur extinction event, but 300M+ years from its start, is used to make furniture and ukeleles.
78ZOX TIL in 2007, a Sunni cleric in Egypt issued a fatwa encouraging women to breastfeed their male business colleagues so that the man would eventually become symbolically related to the woman, thereby precluding any sexual relations and the need for both sexes to observe modesty
166nd TIL about Shiranui, or Unknown Fire, an atmospheric ghost light seen in the water off Kyushu, Japan. When approached, the lights appear to get farther away. They were formerly believed to be the lamps of the Dragon God, and fishing was prohibited when they were seen.
OoKn6 TIL some streets in Old San Juan, PR are paved with blue cobblestones, called adoquines, and were made from the waste, or slag, that resulted from iron smelting, then cast into blocks and brought to the island as ballasts in the bottoms of 18th-century Spanish ships.
VMvXk TIL in Canada, it's legal to sell sex work but illegal to buy, advertise, or pimp.