Post * mWdx — Curious Curator

› added 10 years ago

145

TIL that state vegetable of Oklahoma is the Watermelon…which is a fruit.

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Blpr TIL the guy who discovered Pluto’s moon Charon made up the name to resemble his wife’s name, Charlene. He later discovered that in Greek mythology, Charon was the ferryman who brought the souls of the dead across the river Styx to Hades, AKA Pluto.

0wVKL TIL enigma was cracked before the British by Polish cryptologists who then shared their machine design “Bomba” with the British who would later create the “Bombe”. The poles had been already breaking enigma messages for 6 years prior.

loB4N TIL that Mithridates VI was so paranoid of being poisoned that he slowly drank small amounts of it throughout his life in order to gain an immunity. When he was captured by the Romans, he tried to kill himself with poison but could not

9nW7 TIL the longest continual train rail can take you from the Portuguese coast, through Russia, all the way to southern Vietnam, covering over 10,700 miles (17k kilometers) and 17 countries in 13 days.

LkKXr TIL the first Indian medical book "Atharva Veda" includes a fairly detailed germ theory, as it describes a number of pathogens and possible cures for disease. The book was written in 200BC, but it's ideas can be dated back to 1000BC. Germ theory was not proven correct until the 19th Century AD.