Post * oemR — Curious Curator

› added 11 years ago

82

TIL that the English word “Orange” was the name for the fruit for at least a few hundred years before it was the name of a color.

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VD4m TIL astronauts deposit their urine by dumping it out into space. Astronaut Rusty Schweickart called a urine dump at sunset “one of the most beautiful sights” he saw in space.

ogRo TIL The Russian Civil War was so intense, their alphabet lost 4 letters by the end.

VMpLD TIL most avocados are descended from one tree grown by a Milwaukee postman in 1926

VMkek TIL that the song 'Africa' by Toto is actually about a boy "trying to write a song on Africa, but since he's never been there, he can only tell what he's seen on TV or remembers in the past". This explains the apparently inaccurate line about Kilimanjaro rising above the Serengeti.

J1jQ TIL, Yann Martel (author of Life of Pi, coming soon to a theatre near you) has sent a book to the Prime Minister of Canada every Monday for the past 4 years, in hopes of enlightening Stephen Harper to be less of an asshole.