› added 12 years ago

210

TIL there is a Chinese version of Twitter that has twice the users that Twitter has.

Read more forbes.com

via reddit.com

e0MBg TIL During the past two years, at least five bills relating to the country’s shark fin trade have been introduced in the U.S. House of Representatives and the Senate. All five died before becoming laws, leaving the fate of sharks in the U.S. uncertain.
e0gBb TIL while exploring behind my house I found an abandoned set of railway tracks which were last used in the 18th century.
rN1n1 TIL on our billions years old planet, trees have only been around for 400M years. For the first 40M bacteria, fungus, mold, yeast, and animals had NFI what to do with them. So trees just got old and fell over. 40M years of perfectly fine baseball bats and chesterfields just laying around the place.
YpmwP TIL Motorola was the first company to produce a handheld mobile phone. The first call was from Martin Cooper (Motorola) to his rival Joel Engel (Bell Labs). The phone weighed 1.1kg, had talk time of 30 minutes and took 10 hours to recharge.
nekgG TIL: "Jade" isn't a single mineral. It actually refers to either of two different minerals: nephrite, a silicate of calcium and magnesium, or jadeite, a silicate of sodium and aluminum.