› added 8 years ago

312

TIL that spiders use fluid movement/hydraulics to “push” their legs forward. They lack the muscles to do so normally and use fluid pressure to do so. This is also why their legs curl up when they die and if their body gets punctured, their body “deflates” and is rendered useless.

Read more asknature.org

via ift.tt

N8wN TIL that “rods” and “hogshead” are actual measurement units, and when Grandpa Simpson claims his car “gets forty rods to the hogshead, and that’s the way I like it”, he’s boasting about getting just shy of 0.002 MPG.
R544w TIL of George Pickering, who in 2014 held a team of doctors hostage to save the life of his son, declared brain dead after a stroke. He forced them at gunpoint to keep his son on life support during a 3 hour standoff with police, until he felt his son squeeze his hand.
M7Y77 TIL Two chemical elements were discovered on a star before they were discovered on the earth. Helium was discovered on the sun and technetium was discovered in certain cool stars
Qbla TIL the words “something” and “nothing” were Elzabethan slang for “penis” and “vagina,” respectively. Thus, the title of Shakespeare’s “Much Ado About Nothing” is actually a dirty pun
xNW5 TIL that, despite having sold 40 million records worldwide, Rick Astley abruptly retired from music in 1993, at the age of 27, in order to spend more time with his newborn daughter. He wouldn’t produce any new material for the next 10 years, and it was another 14 before he went back on tour.