› added 11 years ago

154

TIL India was formerly an island, but crashed into Tibet 40 million years ago. The impact created the Himalayas, which are still being pushed up by 2cm each year

Read more pbs.org

via reddit.com

wond1 TIL that Pope Gregory IX issued a Papal Bull declaring that cats bore Satan’s spirit, which subsequently led to huge numbers of cats being killed throughout Europe producing an indirect cause of the Bubonic plague spread by fleas on rats, which would otherwise have been hunted by the dead cats.
LkKOr TIL that in the 1990s, Las Vegas wanted to revitalize its downtown area. There was a plan to build a full scale replica of the USS Enterprise, with a bar and restaurant on top. Casinos were willing to pay for it and the city was onboard; a Paramount executive said no fearing it would be a failure.
R79l TIL that in the United States, possession of child pornography often results in a harsher sentence than actually molesting a child would
W75YY TIL that 5 basketball players were suspended by the NCAA because they had appeared in the movie "Hoosiers". They were suspended for 3 days and ordered to return the money that they had been paid.
PYyDE TIL that when David Attenborough's series "Blue Planet II" aired in 2017, so many Chinese fans downloaded the programme on the country’s online Tencent Video channel that the internet in China temporarily slowed down