› added 12 years ago

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TIL Pillbugs (Roly Polies) are crustaceans, not insects.

Read more insects.about.com

via reddit.com

69yM8 TIL that Scrooge McDuck was canonically 80yo at his first appearance in 1947. Today he's 158.
VBGE4 TIL scientists have discovered a species of extremophilic nematode in Mono Lake in California called Auanema sp. It lives in a lake with 500x the arsenic concentration we can handle, 3 times as salty as the ocean, and has an alkaline pH of 10. It has 3 sexes, and carries its young like marsupial.
rN76W TIL Michael Douglas at first refused to screen test with Sharon Stone as Catherine Tramell in the film Basic Instinct (1992), but agreed to do so after 12 other actresses turned down the part. He was initially upset the relatively unknown Stone was cast, yet later said "She was perfect for the role"
GYjW5 TIL the closest relatives to Primates, aside from flying lemurs and treeshrews, are rodents and lagomorths (rabbits, hares, pikas)
Lg40 TIL in 1933 Major General Smedley Butler proclaimed there was a Coup d'état plot against Roosevelt by the Fascist American upper class who were opposed to the New Deal. He was asked to lead half a million men to take the white house and establish a dictatorship.