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167

TIL that brachiosaurus vomit contained more than enough force & slurry to kill you

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JYE64 TIL we don't know what Robert Hooke looked like because a pissed off Sir Isaac Newton "lost" Hooke's portrait after he died.
x6M55 TIL that the rate at which new words are added to languages has slowed in the digital era, and it's partly because the advent of automatic spell-checkers has given words recognized by these tools a "reproductive fitness" advantage, while non-standard spellings decline.
KOYJQ An extraordinary collection of images from Burns Archive shows the extent to which gas masks were promoted as an essential part of everyday life in the early 20th century. It had been 20 years since the end of World War I, when chlorine gas—and, later, mustard gas—had first been used. The estimates of total casualties from this form of chemical warfare are staggering: 88,000 dead and 1,200,000 injured. With war once again on the horizon, Britain and continental Europe began taking early precautions. In 1938, the British government issued 35 million “General Civilian Respirators”. Everyone from ballerinas to surgeons were encouraged to wear the masks.
DQ0xJ TIL that the Union Jack isn’t Great Britain’s legal flag and is only used as such due to precedent.
wo0dE TIL that a species of fruit fly has sperm cells that are about 2.3 in (5.8 cm) long, which is over 20 times their body length. For comparison, human sperm cells are about 0.002 in (0.005 cm) long, making the fruit fly sperm cells more than 1,000 times longer than those of humans