› added 12 years ago

107

TIL New Zealand was undiscovered and COMPLETELY DEVOID of human beings no more than 800 years ago.

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VPMG TIL that the brightest supernova we have ever witnessed had a kill radius of 500-1000 light years, meaning it would have sterilized millions of habitable planets.
y0AV TIL that before her death at 35, Harriet Cole, a maid at Drexel’s College of Medicine, willed her body to Dr. Rufus Weaver, and requested it be used to benefit science. Weaver proceeded with the complete dissection and mounting of her nervous system.
JYkg1 TIL The fictional city, Ankh-Morpork, from the Discworld series by Terry Pratchett, is twinned with Wincanton, in Somerset, UK, and the town is the first to name streets after their fictional equivalents.
M7ppK TIL that the 17 mile "no man's land" between Cuba and the US naval base at Guantanamo Bay is the largest active minefield in the Western Hemisphere
R7N6w TIL that a marathon is exactly 26 miles and 385 yards because that happened to be the length of the 1908 London Olympic marathon and not because it is the distance between Marathon and Athens, which is approximately 25 miles.