› added 4 years ago

95

TIL that Charles Darwin once found two ground beetles and grabbed one in each hand before seeing a "sacred" crucifix beetle (Panagaeus cruxmajor). Afraid to lose it, he put one of the beetles he had between his teeth to grab the crucifix but the beetle spit acid down his throat and he lost them all.

Read more mentalfloss.com

via reddit.com

p8yL4 TIL the US banned the publication of a large global study done by the World Health Organization in 1995 on cocaine use. Excerpts from the report conflicted with accepted views such as "occasional cocaine use does not typically lead to severe or even minor physical or social problems"
Q1wk TIL the concept of the “rap battle” has existed since the 5th century, where poets would engage in “flyting,” a spoken word event where poets would insult one another in verse
Wk7LN TIL of Zabol, Iran, whose air quality is 12x more polluted than the worst town in the US, mostly due to an annual 4-month long dust storm
P1LKn TIL in 2005 Gary Beach became the first artist to play the same part on Broadway and in movie theatres at the same time after returning to his stage role as Roger De Bris while The Producers movie was in release
oBOnY TIL Greece, Bulgaria, Romania and Cyprus have adopted the Revised Julian calendar, which currently aligns its dates with the Gregorian calendar but will start differing from February 2800