› added 7 years ago

63

TIL: Originally the song "We Need a Little Christmas" was about starting Christmas very early--one week after Thanksgiving.

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QJ0l9 TIL the reason cats and snakes have vertical pupils is because it increases their depth perception while hunting at night while prey animals such as sheep have horizontal pupils so that they may have a panoramic view of their surroundings to watch for predators.
R7N6w TIL that a marathon is exactly 26 miles and 385 yards because that happened to be the length of the 1908 London Olympic marathon and not because it is the distance between Marathon and Athens, which is approximately 25 miles.
pYPWp TIL that yawns are actually 'contagious' as the chances of you yawning increases by 6 times after seeing someone else yawn.
nr0P TIL: there is a 96 minute Russian film titled Russian Ark that was shot in one take. It has an 88% fresh rating on Rotten Tomatoes, received critical acclaim by Roger Ebert and on Metacritic has an 86/100 rating indicating “universal acclaim”.
lo1pK TIL a gannet named Nigel, was dubbed "the loneliest bird in the world" due to the absence of any other birds of his species on his island. Conservationists built fake concrete birds to attract more birds but Nigel ended up falling in love with one the decoys.