› added 11 years ago

170

TIL That a UC Davis student proposed a new SI prefix “Hella-” to signify one Octillion, and it almost got accepted.

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LQdam TIL Yuri Gagarin was chosen for the first spaceflight instead of Gherman Titov because the first Soviet flight was to be one orbit and ~110 minutes, and the second flight 17.5 orbits and 25 hours. Someone with a stronger body was needed for the longer flight, thus the "weaker" Gagarin was chosen.
XEbBE TIL that only 9% of all plastic waste ever produced has been recycled
KO7Z6 TIL Laughter evolved from labored breathing, and people are 24 times more likely to tell apart friends from strangers based on a short audio clip of the two groups laughing.
W7Q6o TIL that Piqua, Ohio, the setting of the Captain Underpants books, is a real town, and was chosen by the author for its now-discontinued annual Underwear Festival.
KYk54 TIL Toro, which means "melting", is sushi made from fatty tuna belly. While today commanding an extremely high price in the areas of the world where consumers like fatty fish (Japan, USA), before WWII, it was considered low quality and often discarded.