› added 6 years ago

308

TIL To treat a malaria outbreak in Borneo, the WHO used DDT to kill mosquitoes. DDT killed wasps which were eating thatch-eating caterpillars who were eaten by geckoes & eaten by cats, who died, which led to rats, plague, & typhus. WHO had to parachute 145,000 cats into the area to kill the rats.

Read more ncbi.nlm.nih.gov

via reddit.com

XEEaE TIL C.S. Lewis and J.R.R. Tolkien had a writing club called the Inklings. They'd read works, and occasionally held a contest in which they'd try to go the longest reading Amanda McKittrick Ros's novels aloud without laughing.
bZ8N TIL, prior to World War I, sharpshooter Annie Oakley was touring Europe. By his request, she knocked the ash from a cigarette being held by German Emperor, Kaiser Wilhelm II. When World War I broke out, she wrote to him and requested a second shot.
r6A1 TIL that a mountain Wyoming is almost 300 million years older than the rocks it rests on. It travelled over 25 miles
m7po TIL that in Singapore hitting a dog with your car and not stopping to help is a crime that might land you in jail; meanwhile, hitting a cat and not stopping is not a crime at all.
QA8k TIL the little girl who sang “I Want a Hippopotamus for Christmas” actually got one, thanks to a newspaper campaign. She gave it to the local zoo and it lived there for 47 years.