› added 5 months ago

24

TIL that there's an underground coal fire in Australia that's been continuously burning for ~6000 years.

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R74M1 TIL Killer whales go through menopause to avoid competition with daughters. This may shed light on why menopause exists at all.
dvm8 TIL Oreos are over 100 years old and are a knock off of a cookie called Hydrox, which itself suffered from the impression that it was a knock off of Oreo and fell into obscurity.
omRL TIL that Teflon (PTFE) is the only substance that a gecko cannot climb.
PYlYO TIL an 18-month old golden retriever saved her owner from being attacked by a cougar. The dog named Angel threw herself between her owner, 11-year-old Austin Forman, and the cougar. Angel and the cougar fought, the cougar winning until an officer was called and shot it. Angel survived and recovered.
YpBZ7 TIL the CIA offered funding to artists Jackson Pollock, Mark Rothko and de Kooning so that their abstract work would show how free artists were in the United States compared to the rigid work of the Soviet Union.