› added 4 years ago

166

TIL that when Mt. Vesuvius erupted, Pompeii had a neighbor city called Herculaneum which suffered the same fate as Pompeii.

Read more dustyoldthing.com

via reddit.com

jO7v TIL that 19th century commercial whaling was made possible by the Giant Tortoises. Stacked helplessly on their backs, they could be kept alive without food or water for 6 months and eaten whenever. Giant tortoises also contained gallons of perfectly drinkable water kept it in a special bladder.
e0Nmn TIL: Kokomo isn’t a real place.
Avd TIL there is a Boston Red Sox slugger Ted Williams who missed almost five full baseball seasons fighting as a fighter pilot in World War II and the Korean War and still managed to hit 521 home runs.
e0kog TIL one of the 'unwritten rules' of the Tour de France: if the Tour is passing through where one of the riders grew up, everyone will slow down to let that rider lead the whole Tour through his hometown (also, if the race leader needs to stop to take a pee break, everyone else slows down/stops too)
KbDw TIL that NASA’s Curiosity Rover is not a small vehicle but actually the size of a car!