› added 4 months ago

18

TIL Daniel Tammet, an autistic savant who speaks 10 languages, described how numbers appear to him in terms of shape, color, and texture. For him, 289 is ugly, 333 is attractive, and pi is beautiful.

Read more wikipedia.org

via reddit.com

4vkw TIL Psilocybe tampanensis, a psychedelic mushroom species, was found once and never again in Tampa, Florida in 1977, and all of today’s widely circulating tampanensis mushrooms are the descendants of that original specimen.
X68R TIL the only American not on Earth during 9/11 [Frank L. Culberston] recorded the event from the ISS. He later learned that the pilot of the plane that struck The Pentagon was a classmate of his from the US Naval Academy [Charles Burlingame].
d8XBr TIL It is estimated that trillions of oysters once surrounded New York City, filtering bacteria and acting as a natural buffer against storm surges.
mx0Wy TIL about David Vetter, a child who lived with a severely weakened immune system meaning that he spent the majority of his life inside a sterile bubble. In 1997 researchers from NASA create a specialized space suit for him, allowing him to walk outside his bubble for the first time.
xVQDg TIL Woody Guthrie wrote "This Land is Your Land" to counter the song "God Bless America"