› added 6 years ago

246

TIL that instead of donating money to the New York Food Bank, Toyota asked its engineers to improve its efficiency, cutting waiting times from 90 to 18 minutes. Toyota has also provided 1 million meals for Hurricane Katrina victims.

Read more huffingtonpost.com

via reddit.com

W71JN TIL while there are popular theories, no one really knows why earthworms come out of the ground when it rains. Originally thought that they rise because they can drown, this has been debunked as earthworms can survive in water for over 2 weeks. The #1 theory now is that they ascend to mate and feed.
6e7l TIL if Earth was 100 pixels wide, the distance to Mars would be approximately 428,000 pixels away.
E1jEd TIL of William Lyttle, the "Mole Man of Hackney", who spent around 40 years digging a network of tunnels up to 59 feet (18 m) long beneath his home. When the authorities discovered the extent of his burrowing, he was rehoused on the top floor of a high-rise to prevent digging.
nVyG TIL the main religious text of Sikhism, called the Guru Granth Sahib, is written in a Esperanto-like language constructed from main North Indian languages, Persian and Arabic. Its purpose to connect to a broader audience, and also to have an extensive vocabulary for oral poetry.
9BnX TIL when Spanish explorers first tried to talk to the Mayans they said “Uic athan,” which is ‘We don’t understand’ in their language. This misunderstanding gave the Yucatan Peninsula its name