› added 10 years ago

164

TIL of Washoe, a chimpanzee who was taught sign language. When one of her trainers returned after a while away Washoe was initially dismissive of her, but when the trainer signed “My baby died”, Washoe signed “cry” and mimmicked a tear running down her face.

6QZQ TIL Johnny Carson once jokingly stated “You know what’s disappearing from the supermarket shelves? Toilet paper. There’s an acute shortage of toilet paper in the United States.” resulting in people stocking up their toilet paper reserves resulting in an actual shortage in many areas.
w1KM TIL during the 2004 Indian Ocean earthquake and tsunami on 26 December 2004, fishermen said they saw with their own eyes “the reality of generations of legends … the remains of ancient temples and hundreds of refrigerator-sized blocks, all briefly exposed before the sea swallowed them up again.”
k5oE TIL that cockroaches experience performance anxiety. A study found that cockroaches running through a hard maze will have more difficulties if other roaches are watching them.
epb5k TIL that in pre-production of How The Grinch Stole Christmas (2000), John Stamos auditioned for the Grinch, but backed out because he was allergic to the prosthetics
9gKG TIL that the very last full-blooded Tasmanian aboriginal person, Truganini, died in 1876. She lost her mother, uncle, sister, and fiancé to European explorers. To this day the ‘Black War’ against Tasmanian aborigines has never been officially memorialised