› added 6 years ago

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TIL when the Hoover Dam was being drafted, the engineers calculated that it would take 125 years for the concrete to cool if done in a single pour. Instead they poured it in sectioned blocks, some as big as 50 square feet and 5 feet high.

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rm01 TIL Fruit bat mothers cry when you take their baby away
Bgx9e TIL of the Hockey-Falco thesis which says the renaissance realist painters used devices made with mirrors and pinholes to project an image of the subject onto a canvas, the painter would then simply trace over the image to make the painting. It's also used to forge famous paintings.
yVyDv TIL about Laura Dekker, a Dutch sailor who at the age of 16 became the youngest person to sail around the world.
KORpw TIL that there was a Nazi spy network during WWII in the city of Monterrey, Mexico. Their goal was to smuggle drugs into the United States to destabilize the country and lower morale
D1EwV TIL the American woodcock has the largest visual field of not only any bird, but of any terrestrial vertebrate because its large eyes are set far back and high on its head, causing its brain to be flipped upside down.It rocks back and forth while foraging and eats its body weight in worms every day.