› added 9 years ago

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TIL that a “white elephant gift exchange” takes its name from the legend of the King of Siam gifting rare albino elephants to those who displeased him because the upkeep costs would financially ruin them.

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via reddit.com

yQQmM Yes, but they never lose that slender figure.
VB7gD TIL Fresca and Squirt are grapefruit-flavored. I've never tried them but I always assumed they were lemon-lime flavored like Sprite/Sierra Mist/7-Up. As an avowed dipsomaniac, this revelation is a complete game-changer.
Ln5p TIL That the Ichneumonidae, a species of wasp that laid it’s young in a live host, made Charles Darwin lose faith in a “benevolent God”
16GM7 TIL one bite of the beaked sea snake that is fully loaded has the ability to kill 52 men and only three drops of their toxic venom have the ability to kill eight people! Without treatment, the venom will kill a person within eight hours.
MWKa TIL An explorer once found a compound, calanolide A, in certain trees in the Malaysian rainforest. Researchers found out that it has anti-HIV properties, but they couldn’t find another sample for nine years as almost all the tree of that species had been cut down for firewood and building material.