› added 10 years ago

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TIL that the main flavoring for root beer and the drug MDMA come from the same plant

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OovNg TIL the integral of the secant formula, important in cartography, has been found accidentally when a mathematician was running through numerical approximations known at the time and recognized they matched ln(|tan(phi/2 + pi/4)|). It took 28 more years for someone find a formal proof
a8rDN TIL of Dr Girard-Mangin, the first female doctor serving during WWI.
rRgad TIL humans are evolving faster than at any point in the past 250 years. Increasingly babies have shorter faces, smaller jaws, an extra artery in the arm, and extra bones in their legs and feet.
KOkpJ TIL the most expensive ZIP code is not in Beverly Hills, but Atherton, California. The median home sale there is over $7 million USD, which is 63% higher than the second most expensive ZIP code (Sagaponack, New York).
1aPLV TIL: Olympus Mons on Mars is so big the escarpment, or cliffs, around the base of the mountain are as high as 6 miles tall, which is taller than Mt. Everest, which for reference is only about 5.5 miles tall.