› added 8 years ago

352

TIL that the word quarantine comes from an Italian variant of ‘quaranta giorni’, meaning forty days, which was the period that all ships were required to be isolated before passengers and crew could go ashore during the Black Death plague epidemic. They would fly this flag known as “Yellow Jack”.

OGArX TIL that it was once proposed to bury nuclear waste at the bottom of the Mariana Trench, with the theory that tectonic plate subduction would eventually push it down into the Earth's mantle
YpoA7 TIL Kane Tanaka, the oldest person currently alive, was born before the Wright brothers flew. As of today (April 19th), she is the only human ever to exist during the first powered flights on both Earth and Mars.
LQlvP TIL of Amelio Robles Ávila, a colonel who fought in the Mexican Revolution. Assigned female at birth (in 1889), he adopted a male identity from the age of 24 and lived openly as a man until his death at age 95.
DQO9j TIL that in 2001, the NASA spacecraft Odyssey detected vast amounts of water ice just below the surface of Mars. This discovery revolutionized the search for extraterrestrial life and made Mars one of the most promising candidates for future human colonization.
J1LYQ TIL in the early 1940s, the average children’s book cost between $2 and $3, which would be the equivalent of about $38 to $50 today. “The Little Golden Book series" started in 1942 and made high quality kids books affordable at 25¢ or $4.20 today