› added 7 years ago

275

TIL that there are only six people left on the planet who can still ‘speak’ the whistled language known as sfyria

Read more bbc.com

via ift.tt

XEDmj TIL that almost 23% of the world's fresh water - more than every American great lake combined - is in one lake in Russia
l5mB TIL: A former king of Sweden became a pirate after he lost the throne
QJ64M TIL During the height of the Cold War, the US built an embassy in Moscow that was so riddled with eavesdropping equipment, by 1985 the building was abandoned after spending $136 million. Eventually, the embassy was taken apart brick by brick and rebuilt over 15 years at a cost of $240 million.
b6Dw7 TIL that the word "shrapnel" comes from Lieutenant-General Henry Scrope Shrapnel, inventor of the first Shrapnel shell, whose name eventually came to be associated with the metal fragments his creation produced.
N7nMP TIL the Kaaba ???? in the Great Mosque of Mecca is black because it's covered with a giant silk shroud called the kiswah. It's made with 670 kgs of black silk, embroidered with 15 kg of gold thread, and costs $4.5 million to make. It's also replaced every year by the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia.