› added 11 years ago

165

TIL that the Star Spangled Banner’s melody was based off a British drinking song called “To Anacreon in Heaven”.

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6dkl TIL in 1994 Crayola release scented crayons but had to retire the food scented ones after a year because parents complained that they “smelled good enought to eat”
d8oaj TIL that even though seed-bearing plants evolved ~360 million years ago, all plants that bare flowers or fruits have only existed for the past ~140 million years. Before seeds, plants used to reproduce through spores. The only living ancestors of these plants are ferns, horsetails, lycophytes.
rNdbM TIL that the US government runs an official dad joke database
bpVj TIL that Vincent Van Gogh only sold one painting during his lifetime.
J1MV8 TIL Roman concrete structures such as the Pantheon and aqueducts are ultra durable because of lime clasts. While many modern concrete structures crumble after a few decades, Roman concrete has self-healing functionality from lime clasts which allow their structures to survive millennia.