› added 3 years ago

87

TIL In a temperate climate, a human body can completely decompose into a skeleton in 3 weeks to several years. If undisturbed by animals, acids in fertile soils can dissolve human skeletons in around 20 years. In sand or neutral soil, the skeleton can remain intact for hundreds of years.

Read more wikipedia.org

via reddit.com

ADV8w TIL that the brushwork on Mona Lisa is so intricate that it literally requires x-rays to view the brush strokes. Apparently, Vinci used a well-known renaissance painting technique called 'sfumato', in which he added 30 layers of paint that still came out to be only 40 micrometers.
5W88 TIL the last surviving veteran of the American Revolutionary War was Lemuel Cook, who died in 1866 at 106 years. He lived long enough to see the end of the Civil War.
loLE1 TIL that Necrophoresis is a behavior found in social insects – such as ants, bees, wasps, and termites – in which they carry the dead bodies of members of their colony from the nest or hive area. This acts as a sanitary measure to prevent disease or infection from spreading throughout the colony.
LQAM9 TIL about Mapinguari, a monstrous jungle-dwelling spirits from Brazilian folklore that protects the forest and animals. It's described as a former human shaman turned into a hairy humanoid cyclops and has a gaping mouth on its abdomen. Some claim it's a modern-day sighting of a giant ground sloth.
GWx5 TIL 16 seconds before launch of the space shuttle that 350,000 gallons of water are poured below the shuttle to suppress sound.