› added 2 years ago

45

TIL about Atomic Gardening, where plants are subjected to radiation in hope of creating useful hybrids. And it's still done today.

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via reddit.com

OG4PL TIL That during the Cuban Missile Crisis in 1962, a black bear and incorrect wiring sounded a claxon that caused nuclear armed F-106 fighters to scramble from a base in Wisconsin. It was found to be a false alarm as the planes were already rolling towards takeoff.
yVyoV TIL Toronto Zoo asked visitors to stop showing cellphone videos to the animals
16R57 TIL the Kootenai Indian Tribe of Idaho and Montana harvests millions of dollars of sturgeon caviar a year, but put all the eggs back in the rivers. They are desperately try to save the shrinking white sturgeon population which they believe are “sacred messengers.”
jKvQ TIL that the engineers of the Brooklyn Bridge, expecting to be supplied with sub-par materials, overbuilt the bridge to the point where even when supplied with inferior cabling the bridge remained stronger than it needed to be by a factor of five.
LQpx9 TIL the Canadian tuxedo refers to a denim double breasted jacket and matching jeans created by Levi's for Bing Crosby. Levi's was inspired in 1951 when Crosby was nearly escorted off a hotel's premises during a hunting trip in Canada because he and his hunting buddies were wearing denim