› added 1 year ago

99

TIL: The Artic Circle and Antarctica are named for Arktos (Greek for Bear) Antarctic = No Bears. While there are no polar bears in Antarctica, the "Bears" in question are Ursa Major and Ursa Minor (which contains the North Star) - Neither constellation is visible from Antarctica (i.e. NoBears land)

wX17 TIL Ethiopians are genetically 62% white and only 24% black and also part Asian.
5YmNP TIL of Steven Phillips, a man who spent 24 years in prison for a crime he did not commit. When he was released in 2008, he received $6 million in compensation. Then, his ex-wife, who divorced him while he was in prison, sued to get part of the compensation. She did not receive a penny.
woLVE TIL there is over 1 million feral horses in Australia, they pose a danger to domestic livestock and road traffic to such a point they need regular culls. There were no Horses in Australia in 1788. From 1820 to 1860, the horse population in Australia increased from 3,969 to 431,525
lo751 TIL After the Siege of Leningrad was broken, the Soviets wanted to prosecute those who had resorted to cannibalism. However, so many were accused (over two thousand) that the NKVD had to divide them into two groups; 'corpse-eating' and 'person-eating'. The former were jailed, that later were shot
b6vkQ TIL Jim Marshall, inventor of the Marshall amplification system widely used by rock guitarists, contracted a form of tuberculosis that affected his bones when he was a young boy. For treatment, he was kept in plaster casts from his ankles to his armpits until he was a teenager.