› added 2 years ago

262

TIL ants evolved from wasps

Read more news.cornell.edu

via reddit.com

rNJGy TIL Railway Post Office cars sorted and delivered mail on moving trains, using hooks to catch mailbags without stopping. The last service ended in 1977, but remnants still exist along decommissioned tracks. At its peak, 9,000 trains covered 200,000 miles of mail routes.
PYB4J TIL in 1924, the US had "Radio Silence Day" where radio broadcasts would be kept quiet for 5 minutes every hour in order to listen for radio signals from space. They didn't hear anything.
xwZk TIL that nobody other than its owners really know who owns IKEA. Parts of it are owned by multiple shell corporations, and many of the stores themselves are technically owned by a non-profit charitable organization and thus do not pay taxes on their income.
VMMR4 TIL of Mary Sweeney who was arrested more than 100 times in Wisconsin in the 1890s for breaking windows while using cocaine.
d8BJ8 TIL The Earth's rotation and speed changes with the weather and geological events. This means atomic time and solar time may not be identical. Sometimes leap seconds are needed for an adjustment. On 31 Dec 2016, a leap second was added, and the time 23:59:60 existed.