› added 4 years ago

306

TIL DNA has a half-life of approximately 521 years, meaning that it would be broken down so much as to be useless after about 1 million years.

Read more slate.com

via reddit.com

J1wLQ TIL that even after a quarter of a century, red deer on the border between the Czech Republic and old West Germany still do not cross the divide. During the Cold War, electric fences made the Czech-German boundary impossible to pass; red deer are intent on maintaining this old boundary.
l78x1 TIL that Null Island located at 0°N 0°E, where the prime meridian and equator meet. Null Island is 600 miles off the coast of West Africa in the Gulf of Guinea in international seas. The spot is marked with the permanently-moored Soul buoy.
voY7 TIL that Ghandi slept naked along with his great-niece and several other young women to test his ability to abstain from sexual relations as part of a spiritual chastity experiment.
gMejX TIL that the common practice of adding "All rights reserved" to copyright notices came from a treaty in 1910, but as of 2000 it has become obsolete and is no longer needed.
Pvkn TIL There is an Iranian custom called Taarof where people offer things they don’t really want to offer with the understanding they will be refused by people who really don’t want to refuse.