› added 11 years ago

119

TIL Tobacco is fertilized with radioactive apatite, the radiation received from smoking a pack a day per year compares to receiving 2,000 modern chest x-rays a year.

Read more epa.gov

via reddit.com

maME TIL a cat’s memory is at least 200 times better than a dog’s. But felines are more selective, and remember what they think is useful to them. Short term memory for a dog is about five minutes; cats remember much longer, up to 16 hours
dBr9 TIL Jennifer Aniston and Matthew Perry starred in a Windows 95 video guide
KYw6Q TIL that Charles V, Holy Roman Emperor had an extramarital sexual relationship with his own step-grandmother, Germaine de Foix, who was one of his many mistresses. Charles later married his first cousin, Isabella of Portugal. His sister, Eleanor, married Isabella's father and her uncle, King Manuel.
8ap0Z TIL seven new rare earth elements have been found in the small Swedish village of Ytterby. Four of the elements are named after the village, ytterbium, yttrium, terbium, and erbium, the other three are holmium, thulium, and gadolinium.
D1XKj TIL that the Latin, Greek, Cyrillic, Arabic, Devanagari, Thai, Armenian, Mongolian, Hebrew, and Tibetan writing systems (among others) are all descended from Egyptian hieroglyphs.