› added 4 years ago

149

TIL that New Zealand is not part of of any of the world's seven recognized continents, and is in fact situated upon the submerged continent of Zealandia.

Read more wikipedia.org

via reddit.com

XENd8 TIL that PEZ candy was invented in Austria, and the three letters are the first, middle and last letters of PffeffErminZ, the German/Austrian word for peppermint.
Yp097 TIL the term “Crosshair” comes from when the military used actual hair in optics during WWII. Mary Babnik Brown first woman to have her hair used for military aircraft bombsights because she had never chemically treated or heated with a curling iron.
J1p5V TIL that the Yahgan people in South America are the world's southernmost human population. They were decimated by diseases introduced by Europeans and the last full-blooded Yahgan died in 2022 due to COVID-19. Today, the total population of the Yahgan is less than 1,600.
LKJp TIL there is a word: “Mamihlapinatapai”, from the Yaghan language, which is considered the most succint and hardest word to translate: it means: “a look shared by two people, each wishing that the other would initiate something that they both desire but which neither wants to begin.”
LQbyQ TIL that some turtles can breathe through their butts, a process known as cloacal respiration.