› added 4 months ago

54

TIL about jeep ducking

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oBpnL TIL that in 1720 a ship full of precious goods arrived in Marseille/France. In spite of clear signs, greedy merchands put pressure an the authorities to shorten the quarantine and not to burn the freight. More than 100.000 people died because of pestilence in the next two years.
VBn7m TIL that the male redback spider will assist his partner during sexual cannibalism by somersaulting toward her mouthparts. Because this allows him to mate only once, some find a juvenile female -- too young to eat him -- and break her exoskeleton to deliver his sperm for her to use when mature.
69718 TIL that Blue-eyed people are more likely to become alcoholics. A gene lying near the OCA2 gene on chromosome 15 carries a mutation that leads to increased alcohol tolerance, and thus a tendency to drink too much.
Q5YM TIL that the term Gerrymandering comes from a literal Gerrymanderer - Elbridge Gerry, who drew the voting districts of Essex County, MA in such a way that a local paper compared it to a salamander, dubbing it the ‘Gerry-mander"
9YRKG TIL UK's highest-paid entertainer in WW2, George Formby, went to Normandy after the landings, & gave 9 shows to frontline troops who’d held out for 56 days without relief, his audience in foxholes. He also crawled through trenches to tell jokes when the enemy was too close for a show.