› added 4 years ago

74

TIL that a “touron” is park ranger slang for a tourist who behaves like a moron when entering a national park.

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MA6m TIL When macaroni and cheese’s ingredients became widely accessible in North America, the fancy upperclass restaurants stopped serving it.
1WxW TIL that there is a cave in Turkey that was believed to be the “Gates of Hell”. It was given the name because the cave contains toxic gases that, if inhaled could kill you in an “instant”.
xdNw TIL that Northern Elephant Seals were thought to be extinct until eight were discovered on Guadalupe Island in 1874 by a Smithsonian expedition. They then killed seven for their collections.
pdPp TIL that when the Big Bang theory was first presented, most scientists rejected it for sounding too religious.
LQdam TIL Yuri Gagarin was chosen for the first spaceflight instead of Gherman Titov because the first Soviet flight was to be one orbit and ~110 minutes, and the second flight 17.5 orbits and 25 hours. Someone with a stronger body was needed for the longer flight, thus the "weaker" Gagarin was chosen.