› added 4 years ago

365

TIL the red stuff dropped from airplanes to put out forest fires also acts as a fertilizer.

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yQDdl TIL about Okinawa Island. This particular island is a so-called Blue Zone, an area where the people live longer than most others elsewhere in the world. As of 2002 there were 34.7 centenarians for every 100,000 inhabitants, which is the highest ratio worldwide.
nWoPP TIL the inventor of the "pop up" later apologized for his invention after seeing how his creation had been used for pop-up advertising
kJ9B1 TIL the town of Embarrass, Minnesota, gets its name from the French word Embarras, meaning a difficult obstacle to overcome. It is also one of the coldest places in America, with a growing season a month shorter than that of Fairbanks, Alaska.
Gv6j TIL all the “meat” on a Subway cold-cut combo is actually turkey-based.
66p8 TIL that the personal bodyguards of the Byzantine Emperor were primarily Scandinavians and Anglo-Saxons. They comprised the “Varangian Guard” which was also an Elite Unit of the Byzantine Army. The loyalty and honor of these “axe-bearing barbarians” became a trope of Byzantine writers.