Post * mBBo — Curious Curator

› added 8 years ago

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TIL “scrub” was used as an insult meaning a “mean, insignificant fellow” as far as the 1580s.

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oDvY TIL Scientists have created a sonic “tractor beam” that can pull, push and pirouette objects that levitate in thin air.

161NV TIL During World War II The All-American Girls Professional Baseball League originated by MLB executives who started it in order to keep baseball in the public eye while the majority of able men were away

J1l8 TIL that in 2005 a woman gave birth to twins, with two separate fathers.

R5dyw TIL the inventor of the fire hydrant is unknown because the patent was lost in a fire too.

KOO7Q Imagine yourself at a concert hall looking at a symphonic orchestra on stage. Have you ever noticed that high-pitched strings sit left of low-pitched strings? Going from left to right, one usually sees violins, violas, cellos and double basses. That is, one moves from high pitches on the left to low pitches on the right. Why? The orchestra’s arrangement is not a cultural oddity, like driving on the right side of the road. Rather, it is due to our own biological makeup. Higher pitches tend to be better processed by the left hemisphere of the brain, while lower pitches tend to be better processed by a similar region in the right hemisphere. This organisation is thought to have repercussions far beyond music, perhaps even helping to explain why language is mostly processed in the left hemisphere. So the part of my brain that better processes high sounds sits where the higher-pitched instruments sit: on the left. But that’s not the end of the story.