› added 1 year ago

297

TIL about "call of the void" The feeling — which tends to be brief, entirely out of character and often involves thoughts of leaping from a high place or driving headfirst into an oncoming vehicle

N7LBe TIL that the seasons in the Northern Hemisphere are the opposite of those in the Southern Hemisphere. This means that in Argentina and Australia, winter begins in June.
jNkRX TIL that since it can't match the Earth's rotational speed, a westward plane technically travels east — just like the entire planet beneath it. It just has engines that help it travel east a little more slowly than everything else, making it move west relative to the ground.
7rLZP TIL Hagfish were being transported to South Korea where they are eaten as a delicacy, but instead covered the car and road in slime. Hagfish slime expands by 10,000 times in a fraction of a second. It is 100,000 times softer than Jell-O. Hagfish produce slime when attacked or stressed.
691k7 TIL that despite Rupert Murdoch's large media attention, media billionaire David Thomson, who owns all of Reuters, is over three times as wealthy ($61B). Despite this, he's only given a single substantive interview, ever.
kOrw4 TIL there is an island in the pacific called Yap that uses circular stones as currency. The stones are too large to move so the ownership of the stones is passed by word of mouth to transact business. The location of the stone is irrelevant even in the case of one lost on the bottom of the sea