› added 4 months ago

14

TIL that Neanderthals invented the earliest known synthetic material by deliberately distilling birch tar in underground, oxygen-poor setups

Read more arstechnica.com

via reddit.com

dDmbZ TIL that Asians are the only American racial minority group not overrepresented in the homeless population.
4XGQb TIL in 2020 Customs and Border Protection tweeted that they had stopped a shipment of "counterfeit Airpods". However, the attached photos showed that the seized goods weren't Apple fakes - they were OnePlus Buds.
5VLe9 TIL that trees can communicate with each other through a network of underground fungi, known as the "Wood Wide Web," to share nutrients, warn of dangers, and even support sick or dying trees.
OJXY TIL that PEPSI spent several hundred million dollars to slightly change their logo in 2008. The branding agency prepared a 27-page document to prove that this logo is the Da Vinci Code of branding, drawing on everything from magnetic fields to the “Golden Ratio”
Wkd49 TIL Three different artificial sweeteners (saccharin, cyclamate & aspartame) were discovered as the direct result of scientists with poor hand hygiene.