Post * vKGK — Curious Curator

› added 12 years ago

304

TIL that ketchup’s popularity and universality is due in part to the fact that it embodies all five distinct tastes: salty, sweet, bitter, sour, and umami

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LQM8Q TIL that the Indian mathematician and astronomer Baudhayana, who lived around 800 BCE, wrote the Baudhayana Sulba Sutra, which describes the construction of various geometric shapes using a rope known as a "sulba” with precise geometric measurements, the Pythagorean theorem, area of a circle.

grmx4 TIL The Strap-toothed Whale is so named because males have flat tusks that grow backwards over their beaks toward their heads at a 45 degree angle, making it impossible for them to open their mouths more than a few centimeters.

5wZD TIL he world record for longest, most accurate shot with a bow is made by an armless man, hitting the target 230 yards away.

oEZE TIL that a cave diver who let go of the underwater guideline and got lost whilst exploring the Sterkfontein Caves, a vast complex of passages and pools in South Africa, lived for three weeks in the pitch dark before dying of starvation.

4XXGN A deadly outbreak of cholera followed the 7.0 earthquake that struck Haiti three years ago this week. Jonathan Katz, the only American fulltime staff reporter stationed in Haiti at the time, explains what caused the outbreak--and why it was anything but inevitable.