› added 11 years ago

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TIL when Darwin was studying a Madagascar orchid whose flower had a foot long nectar filled tube, he hypothesized it had an as yet unknown pollinating moth with a proboscis of the same length, a length unprecedented at the time. Not until 21 years after his death was the moth finally discovered.

b6pn0 TIL of the Mathew Effect: The rich get richer and the poor get poorer. "For whoever has will be given an abundance. But whoever does not have, even what he has will be taken away."— Matthew 25:29, Luke19:26
nWV0d TIL pilot callsigns are assigned to you by your "buddies", inspired from something stupid you did/say, your name, or your physical appearance. e.g. "Rat" for someone short and ugly; "Alphabet" if your name is too long; "Caveman" if you enjoyed survival training too much.
wLA46 TIL that Tolkein's Lord of The Rings trilogy has a word count of 481,103 words. In comparison, book 3 of another popular fantasy saga A Song of Ice and Fire by George RR Martin called A Storm of Swords alone has a word count of 424,000 words.
ZxvD TIL After being shot, kicked, and spat upon, the bodies of Benito Mussolini and his mistress were hung upside down on meathooks from the roof of an Esso gas station. The bodies were then stoned by civilians from below. NSFW
kOpXm TIL that the Lumière brothers, the inventors of motion picture, once said that "the cinema is an invention without any future" and gave up on the technology to go back to focusing on photography, so their involvement in the early history of film was quite brief