› added 1 year ago

252

TIL that the revolutionary idea by Julius Petri, creator of the Petri dish, was actually to cover the agar plate with a slightly bigger clear lid in order to see growth without contaminating the specimens.

Read more npr.org

via reddit.com

7rddO TIL Phrases like 'Abso-fuckin-lutely' are called expletive infixation
R5rej TIL it was Avi Arad's idea to make Stan Lee cameos a tradition, but Sam Raimi originally didn't want Lee to cameo in Spider-Man, saying, "imagine you’re a minor director in England doing Macbeth and you’re told, 'Put the writer in the play.' It sounds absurd."
M7grb TIL though it's long been prized for its clarity and luxurious feel, "crystal glass," also called Lead Glass, contains up to 40% lead by mass. It has been proposed that the historic association of gout with the upper class was, in part, caused by their extensive use of lead crystal to store alcohol.
D1Wme TIL about Benford's Law - if you get a bunch of random numbers, the most common leading digit will be the number one (around 30%)
loYLB TIL China is harvesting organs from live "prisoners of conscience", performing more than 4,000 organ transplants per day. The EU parliament has passed resolutions against it but they've gone basically unnoticed