› added 4 years ago

189

TIL Planthoppers (Issus coleoptratus) has the only mechanical gears ever found in Nature. The first natural design that mechanically functions like our geared systems contrasting the gear-like structures previously found on other animals like the spiny turtle which were purely ornamental.

jo7a TIL in 1942, 25 US marines landed on Japanese territory to survey an airfield. After being surrounded by the Japanese, they held a defensive perimeter for 9 hours before being overrun. Eventually, the only surviving marine swam through 4 miles of shark-infested waters to return to Allied lines.
b94Rj TIL about Project Iceworm, a proposed 52,000 square mile large nuclear missile complex. By the time of its evacuation, it’s total length was 1.9 miles, and contained a hospital, a shop, a theater and a church.
4jGJ TIL Curly, from The Three Stooges, would lay down and run around in circles on the floor when he forgot his lines. His ability to improvise led directors to have cameras roll freely to let Curly improvise. Writers would leave gaps in scripts as well.
v1yJ4 TIL that Michael Rockefeller, son of Senator Nelson Rockefeller and great-grandson of oil magnate John Rockefeller, was very likely eaten by cannibals in New Guinea, and it's speculated that Nelson's mother paid a private investigator $250,000 for recovering Michael's skull from the tribe.
oBgxE TIL - In 2013 a company create an ‘electric backpack’ that attaches on the back of a cockroach allowing it to be controlled by a mobile phone app.