› added 1 year ago

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TIL that The Diomede Islands are only 2.4 miles apart but are in different calendar days due to the International Date Line, 21 hours apart. The Big Diomede (part of Russia), is almost a full day ahead of the eastern island, Little Diomede (part of the USA).

Read more earthobservatory.nasa.gov

via reddit.com

OoKn6 TIL some streets in Old San Juan, PR are paved with blue cobblestones, called adoquines, and were made from the waste, or slag, that resulted from iron smelting, then cast into blocks and brought to the island as ballasts in the bottoms of 18th-century Spanish ships.
DdZY TIL In 1912 three men set out to recover emperor penguin eggs from Antarctica. It was so cold one man’s teeth chattered so violently that they shattered. When he returned to the UK the National History Museum refused to accept the eggs.
Lk4GZ TIL While hunting down a rival in 1963, Hiatian president Francois Duvalier was told that the rival had transformed himself into a black dog, which prompted Duvalier to order that all black dogs in Haiti be put to death
wLKlo TIL of Howard Blackburn—a sailor who, after becoming stranded and losing his mittens in a small boat off the coast of Newfoundland, let his hands freeze in a hooked position so he could row back to shore. He lost all his fingers, but survived and went on to sail across the Atlantic single-handedly.
ZpKDR TIL about the Epic of Manas, a 500,000 lines long Kyrgyz poem which was transmitted by word of mouth for centuries, and holds tge Guinness world record for longest poem