› added 6 years ago

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TIL the reason cats and snakes have vertical pupils is because it increases their depth perception while hunting at night while prey animals such as sheep have horizontal pupils so that they may have a panoramic view of their surroundings to watch for predators.

xVDWb TIL During the Great Plague of London, the City Corporation ordered the killing of all cats and dogs, in an effort to prevent the spread of the disease. It's estimated that 40,000 dogs and 200,000 cats were killed, however it was the rats spreading the virus, not cats or dogs.
w1gP TIL East St. Louis, IL has a higher murder rate than Gary IN, New Orleans LA, Baltimore MD, Detroit MI, and in 2014 the murder rate surpassed that of Honduras, the country with the highest murder rate in the world. In 2016 rankings showed it had the highest murder rate of any city in the U.S.
nMZW TIL The majority of LSD available in the US in the 1990’s came from UCLA Researcher William L. Pickard. He was arrested whilst converting an old nuclear missile Silo into a massive LSD Laboratory.
jYYM TIL There’s a service called “Cleaning for a reason” in the U.S. and Canada that cleans the houses of women with cancer for free so they can focus on their health.
1aJEV TIL of Ablaut Reduplication - a subtle rule of linguistics which dictates why "King Kong" sounds more right than "Kong King", "Hip hop" sounds more correct than "Hop hip". Similarly "tick tock", "zig zag", "chit chat" etc.