› added 7 years ago

140

TIL Due to China’s early discovery and love of ceramics they didn’t produce any glass between the 14th-19th century. This meant they didn’t have mirrors and windows etc, leaving them behind in sciences, as they didn’t make lenses and other things fundamental to science.

Read more youtube.com

via reddit.com

wobJ6 TIL that before the fatal crash of Concorde flight 4590 - caused when a tyre blowout on takeoff ignited the fuel tanks — there had already been 57 recorded Concorde tire blowouts during takeoff - including a near crash in 1979
9gZm TIL Harrison Ford has had a species of spider (Calponia harrisonfordi) and a species of ant (Pheidole harrisonfordi) named after him for his conservation work.
0d1XA TIL Frank Richards, a circus performer, endured severe blows to his stomach, letting a boxing champion hit him 75 times and even withstood being shot by a 47kg cannonball. The cannon was loaded with a spring and fired at close range, but Frank resisted these feats twice daily.
5YQAB TIL dinosaurs in the stegosaurus suborder have a cluster of spikes on their tails informally referred to by paleontologists as "Thagomizer", stemming from a 1982 joke in Gary Larson's The Far Side
woMdW TIL there were subway lines that curved under the Berlin Wall during the communist occupation. Some stations on the East Berlin side became “ghost stations”—trains from West Berlin passed through them in eerie silence, but weren’t allowed to stop until after the Wall came down in 1989.