› added 10 years ago

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TIL - The Earth is 4.6 billion years old. If you scale this to 46 years then the human race has been here for just 4 hours. The Industrial Revolution began just 1 minute ago and in that time, 50% of the Earth’s forests have been destroyed.

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rN1Nd TIL that Genericide is the term for when the name of a distinctive product becomes the generic term for a general class of products (e.g. Jell-O used to describe all gelatin desserts)
gr999 TIL that the 'brotherly love' in the etymology of the name Philadelphia refers to literal incest, when Ptolemy II married his sister Arsinoe II they both took/were given the name Philadelphos, or 'sibling-lover'.
Abno TIL that when Genghis Khan sent a trade caravan to the Khwarezmid empire, the governor of one city seized it and killed the traders. Genghis Khan retaliated by invading the empire with 200,000 men and killing the governor by pouring molten silver down his eyes and mouth
yd0e TIL that in 1979 there was an anthrax leak at a Soviet military facility that killed most of the workers in a factory downwind. The USSR denied having an active biological weapons program, but in 1992 a team of inspectors discovered how the accident had occurred.
epDAk TIL there were two serial killers in the USA with the last name of Bundy