› added 12 years ago

82

TIL that, in October 2012, Boy Scouts of America was forced to release 20,000 pages of documentation on 1,200 cases of child sex abuse. They had allegedly been helping to cover up about 1/3 of those cases.

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Pyee TIL when Edison died in 1931, Tesla was the only one to submit a negative opinion of him to the NY Times.
b9RnQ TIL Ancient Greek sculptures were originally painted bright colors; they only appear white today because the original pigments have deteriorated
5VVLD TIL that yaks are the Swiss-army knives of domesticated animals. They can be milked like a cow, ridden like a horse (including for playing polo), sheared for wool (super warm and soft) like sheep, eaten like a pig, pull carts like an ox, carry stuff like a donkey and their dung burns like wood
b6Y64 TIL of the 1908 Tunguska explosion in Siberia, which experts believe was an asteroid that ripped apart 800 square miles of forest
VBdjB TIL that the longest word in the English language has 189,819 letters! Today I learned that the longest word in the English language is the chemical name for "Titin," the largest known protein found in the human body. This word has 189,819 letters and would take about 3.5 hours to read aloud!