› added 1 month ago

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TIL that bullet trains in Japan were designed in 1940 & included plans to extend to Beijing and even Singapore.

Read more wikipedia.org

via reddit.com

RJbw TIL: Sexual reproduction for barnacles is difficult, as the organisms cannot leave their shells to mate. To facilitate genetic transfer between isolated individuals, barnacles have extraordinarily long penises⁠. Barnacles probably have the largest penis to body size ratio of the animal kingdom.
0lWM TIL Hugo Black, Supreme Court Justice for 34 years, was a member of the KKK.
WZjY TIL that when New Horizons flew past Jupiter the gravity assist created by the planet increased its speed by 9,000 mph.
1aJwW TIL in 1856, 18 year old William Perkin accidentally discovered the colour mauve while attempting to synthesize a cure for malaria, upon which he abandoned his previous project and proceeded to revolutionize the synthetic dye industry.
p5rA TIL that around 90% of East Asians are lactose intolerant, which explains why Chinese food doesn’t contain cheese.