› added 3 months ago

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TIL: The original Roman calendar had only 10 months, starting in March and ending in December, with no winter months. We still see traces of it today: September (7th month), October, November, and December (10th) reflect their original positions before January and February were added later.

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ZpKGG TIL of CONOP 8888, also known as Counter-Zombie Dominance: a U.S. Department of Defense Strategic Command CONOP document that describes a plan for the United States and its military defending against zombies
N71yJ TIL Charles Strite invented pop-up toaster (and nothing else) out of frustration. At the time, bread had to be turned manually in order to toast both sides, which resulted in cafeterias serving burnt toast most of the time.
awV4N TIL a "magnitude 10 [earthquake] or larger cannot happen." Why? "The magnitude of an earthquake is related to the length of the fault on which it occurs. . . . No fault long enough to generate a magnitude 10 earthquake is known to exist, and if it did, it would extend around most of the planet."
4XY5N TIL about the illusion of explanatory depth, which leads people to overestimate how knowledgable they really are, but can be counteracted by asking them to explain how things work
gr66X TIL that the children’s song “Do Your Ears Hang Low?” is a sanitized version of “Do Your Balls Hang Low?”, which was popular with British soldiers in WWI. General Douglas Haig once heard a column of soldiers singing it and went to berate their commander, only to find the commander singing along.