› added 12 years ago

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TIL Emperor Caligula would chew his victims testicles as a form of torture.

8G8L TIL that the “pause symbol” on your remote control is derived from the musical notation called a “Caesura,” which calls for a complete pause in a composition
KOO7Q Imagine yourself at a concert hall looking at a symphonic orchestra on stage. Have you ever noticed that high-pitched strings sit left of low-pitched strings? Going from left to right, one usually sees violins, violas, cellos and double basses. That is, one moves from high pitches on the left to low pitches on the right. Why? The orchestra’s arrangement is not a cultural oddity, like driving on the right side of the road. Rather, it is due to our own biological makeup. Higher pitches tend to be better processed by the left hemisphere of the brain, while lower pitches tend to be better processed by a similar region in the right hemisphere. This organisation is thought to have repercussions far beyond music, perhaps even helping to explain why language is mostly processed in the left hemisphere. So the part of my brain that better processes high sounds sits where the higher-pitched instruments sit: on the left. But that’s not the end of the story.
Zp0av TIL fires that last under snow, through winter, hibernating and sometimes causing wildfires the following spring are called zombie fires.
QNJEe TIL - Toyota was caught cheating in the '95 World Rally Championship. Engineers developed a mechanism to temporarily remove the mandated turbo restrictor plate and give their Celica an extra 50 BHP.
BMRW TIL blanket octopuses tear tentacles off of the Portuguese man o’ war and use them as weapons