› added 12 years ago

194

TIL If uncoiled, the DNA in all the cells in your body would stretch 10 billion miles—from here to Pluto and back.

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pY8QZ TIL people in Germany and France used to eat cockchafer beetles. They were made into a soup and could also be candied. This practice stopped when the beetles' population steeply declined from the use of pesticides.
ybxe TIL that Get Smart’s hilarious Don Adams served honorably as a Marine during WWII and fought on Guadalcanal, the only survivor of his platoon. Later, he served as a Drill Instructor. Ooh Rah Mr. Adams on this Memorial Day!
GYV74 TIL after arriving in Italy for the Fourth Crusade, the crusader army could not fund their expedition. They spent the remainder of the crusade sacking an Italian city, getting excommunicated, and pillaging the Christian city of Constantinople. Very few went to the Holy Land.
E1YGd TIL the chemical Thioacetone is the world's smelliest substance. It's so bad that, after a lab technician dropped a vial of it, it induced instant vomiting from people in buildings almost 1/2 mile away.
V5WZ TIL in 1942 a British forest guard in India made an alarming discovery. Some 16,000 feet above sea level, at the bottom of a small valley, was a frozen lake absolutely full of skeletons.