› added 11 years ago

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TIL The smell of books makes some people need to poop. The Mariko Aoki phenomenon is a phenomenon consisting of the urge to defecate while visiting a bookstore. Originating in Japan, it is named for the woman who first publicized such an urge.

5vrp TIL that pendulums behave inexplicably different during solar eclipses, sometimes rotating up to 13 degrees in a span of 14 minutes (as opposed to the usual rate of 3.75 degrees per 15 minutes).
wY67 TIL according to Julius Caesar’s will, if Octavian had died or refused his inheritance, his second listed heir would be Brutus, the man who murdered him.
e0844 TIL that the most expensive medicinal drug ever is Zolgensma (produced by Novartis), which costs $2.125 million for a single dose. The drug is a gene therapy, taken as a one-time treatment for spinal muscular atrophy, a rare genetic disorder (about 30 babies are born each month with the disease)
RLpa TIL a 12-country coalition of African nations is working together to build the ‘Great Green Wall of Africa’, an unprecedented organic barrier to span nearly 5,000 miles across the continent and combat the relentless spread of desertification
D1jag TIL sperm don't race to the egg. They are passively transported via "pumping & wafting", weeding out the high number of "duds" that human males have. Many are stored in side-channels for up to 10 days. The sperm introduced to the egg are a random sampling, & don't represent "survival of the fittest"