› added 3 years ago

62

TIL that Eratosthenes, a Greek mathematician and astronomer (276 BC), measured of Earth's circumference by using the shadow angles from the sun in two locations. He calculated it was 39,375 km, which is 1.4% less than the real number of 40,076 km

Read more wikipedia.org

via reddit.com

mw0R TIL when a Virginia school board tried to ban “To Kill a Mockingbird” as immoral, author Harper Lee wrote a letter asking if the board members were literate and donated money to enroll them in the first grade.
8gJb TIL that there is a card game called Mao in which new players are told only “the only rule you may be told is this one”, which means that new players have to discover the rules by themselves. The aim of the game is to be the first to get rid of all the cards in his hands without breaking any rules.
69eD7 TIL sometimes a baby can taste what their mom had for lunch
LAJP TIL that more than four billion years ago Earth was hit by several objects larger than 600 miles that could vaporize the oceans and sterilize the surface yet bacterial life survived deep underground and each time recolonized the planet.
7rADO TIL Mary Queen of Scots (1586) plotted to kill Queen Elizabeth I with secret coded letters. Walsingham (Elizabeth's secretary) cracked the code. He sent Mary a letter using her code, asking her to list all people involved in the plot. She thought the code was unbreakable.