› added 11 years ago

71

TIL that on 4 Dec of the Year 292,277,026,596, 64-bit versions of the Unix time stamp will cease to work. This is not anticipated to pose a problem, however, as this is considerably longer than the time it would take the Sun to theoretically expand to a red giant and swallow the earth.

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drwE TIL Queen Victoria was fluent in Urdu and Hindi.
Z8oV4 TIL that in 1829, nineteen Australian convicts revolted and seized a ship near Tasmania, which they then sailed to Japan. Though they offered gifts, including a boomerang, the Japanese expelled them and they ended up being recaptured in China.
PYA6w TIL Scurvy used to be the scourge of the navy, killing sailors on long voyages. Now it's a blight to evolutionary biologists. They just don't know why it exists in humans. It's only in the primates - gorillas, chimps, humans, and a few monkeys - that the body stops producing this necessary vitamin.
x65xb TIL that in WW1 unarmed Scottish bagpipers would accompany battalions charging at the German trenches
lp6A TIL ‘patient zero’ of last year’s West African ebola outbreak was a Guinean child who played with bats residing in a hollow cola tree. It is unknown whether the bats were the ultimate source of the infection since either by coincidence or as a result of that public warning, the tree was burnt down.