› added 8 years ago

199

TIL that a 19th century governor of Greece introduced potatoes to the country. Initially, he tried giving seed potatoes to skeptical farmers. When this failed, he piled them in public under guard, convincing people of their value. They stole the potatoes and planted them.

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W0Xo TIL When WR104, a binary star goes supernova, the solar system could be flooded with gamma radiation destroying all life on earth.
lpKA TIL there is a 550 foot skyscraper in New York City with no windows. It was built to withstand the fallout of a nuclear blast for up to 2 weeks.
8apyP TIL that the water in Lake Natron, Tanzania, has an extremely high soda and salt content, so high that it would cause the creatures crashing into it to calcify, perfectly preserved, like hard rock as they dry.
QJYKL TIL the Graf Zeppelin was the first airship to offer commercial transatlantic flights, to cross the Pacific without stops, to circumnavigate the world, and to travel over a million miles.
9YPEB TIL Picasso once famously said: "It took me four years to paint like Raphael, but a lifetime to paint like a child." Researchers hypothesized that this is because early childhood is a period characterized by "exuberant neural connectivity" that facilitates "arbitrary sensory experiences in infants."