› added 4 years ago

1532

TIL that there is a tree called the Idiot Fruit tree (Idiospermum australiense) which only occurs in Australia’s Daintree rainforest. It is also known as the green dinosaur due to it dating back over 100 million years.

Read more australiangeographic.com.au

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wNdo TIL that there are roughly 5,000 words of Old Norse origin present in the lexis of the English language and that one in 33 men in Britain can claim Norse ancestry.
0ddvj TIL Billie Holiday was arrested on drug charges in 1947 and tried in utterly bizarre circumstances. The prosecutor asked for leniency, while her defense attorney convinced her to plead guilty, assuring her she'd be sent to a hospital. Instead, the judge sentenced her to a year in federal prison.
XwJk TIL that the album “Sgt Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band” by The Beatles was inspired by the album “Pet Sounds” by The Beach Boys, which was inspired by the album “Rubber Soul” by The Beatles.
kOV65 TIL about English Sweating Sickness, an epidemic in the 15th and 16th centuries that caused chills for a few hours, then profuse sweating for a few hours, then death within 24 hours of symptoms first appearing. The cause still isn't known.
N7N1J TIL that in the 70s, Fort Lauderdale, Florida, tried creating its own artificial coral reef by dumping some 2 million used tires into the ocean. It became an environmental disaster, naturally, but also a military training exercise when divers had to retrieve the tires (almost one by one).