› added 6 years ago

117

TIL that the world is facing a global sand crisis because sand and gravel mining greatly exceeds natural renewal rate.

Read more newyorker.com

via reddit.com

oB0wK TIL that the Allies liberated Paris from the Nazis on 8/25/44.
Wk0YL TIL that Andre Geim won the parodistic Ig Nobel Prize in 2000 for his work on using magnetism to levitate a frog. 10 years later, his experiments regarding graphene won him the 2010 Nobel Prize in Physics. This makes him the only ever recipient of both the Ig Nobel and Nobel Prizes.
5On8 TIL that writer Henry David Thoreau wore a large neckbeard for most of his life, insisting that women found it attractive
jNXln TIL Union Pacific train operators once faced a real life "trolley problem" when 30 of its cars broke loose during a switching operation and headed at high speed without breaks toward downtown Los Angeles -- and decided to derail them on a side track, destroying two homes and injuring 13 people
R5x8l TIL John Chapman, aka Johnny Appleseed, not only planted appleseed everywhere he went. He built entire nurseries, including protective fences to deter wildlife. The nurseries were left in the hands of neighbors, who were allowed to profit from the trees, and he would return to tend the trees yearly.