› added 7 years ago

186

TIL The Aral Sea, formerly the fourth largest lake in the world, has been drying up since the 1960's due to poor water management practices, so much so that the eastern basin is now called the Aralkum Desert, full of ghostly relics of rusting ships and decaying docks.

Read more wikipedia.org

via reddit.com

woKY8 TIL Nazi General Loringhoven was inside the Führerbunker during the last days of Nazi Germany. He attempted to escape, was captured by Allied forces, and later became a NATO commander, retiring as Inspector General of the Armed Forces of West Germany in 1973.
x6Jv1 TIL that the n in 7-ELEVEn is lowercase because the President's wife thought that all caps looked too aggressive and harsh. She thought the change made the logo appear to be more graceful.
PYgNL TIL the Chernobyl radiation disaster was not reported, and covered-up in Ukaraine after its meltdown. It was initially reported in Sweden, 1100 km away, after a powerful plant employee passed a radiation monitor and set off alerts for high radiation exposure.
D19dr TIL that nitrate film is prone to severely decaying if not properly cared for. First, the image and the plastic begin to deteriorate, then the gelatin binder becomes soft and sticky. Eventually the film will adhere to itself to the point where the roll becomes a solid mass or "hockey puck."
R7X6a TIL that birds were the only dinosaurs to survive the mass extinction, because they were small enough to burrow, had beaks and were smarter than other small beaked dinosaurs.