Post * QWyd — Curious Curator

› added 12 years ago

187

TIL that the word “galaxy” literally means “milky way,” so the milky way galaxy is the “milky way milky way.”

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4XKoJ TIL in 1918 World War 1 censors minimized early reports of the flu epidemic's death toll to maintain wartime morale. Newspapers in neutral Spain were free to report on the epidemic's effects, creating a false impression that Spain was the hardest hit, and giving rise to the name "Spanish flu".

OopDY TIL 8% of modern Spanish words are Arabic in origin, entering Spanish usage during Muslim rule in the southern Iberian peninsula in 711-1492 AD. These loan words often begin with with "a-" or "al" (e.g., almuerzo, aceite, arroz, azul) because these sounds mark a definitive noun in Arabic.

R5l48 TIL that almost half of America’s food goes to waste

nWB4d TIL birds truly are government spies... US military funds research on crows' facial recognition abilities for "enemy tracking"

pPOe TIL that In 1970, a dead sperm whale on an Oregon beach was blown up with dynamite in an attempt to get rid of the decomposing corpse. Flying debris from the blast destroyed the roof of a nearby car, and onlookers were covered with whale particles.