› added 3 months ago

16

TIL that powered flight has independently evolved four times in history: in bats, birds, pterosaurs, and insects.

Read more scienceworld.ca

via reddit.com

QNXZd TIL after noticing a decline in the Christmas Island pipistrelle, permission was given by the Australian govt. to capture and breed wild specimens. In Aug 2009, scientists only found one instance of the bat through echolocation after four weeks. It later went silent that same month.
QNWaE TIL although Leonard Cohen’s song “Hallelujah” has nothing to do with Christmas or winter, it has gradually been added to the Christmas Music repertoire because Britain’s Got Talent singer Susan Boyle decided to include it on her Christmas album in 2010
yA7w TIL that a former Khmer Rouge member in Cambodia named Aki Ra has been spending the last 20+ years disarming landmines all over the country, with no pay, and no armor.
x6J10 TIL that there’s a 3,200-year-old Egyptian tablet that records excuses for why people missed work. This ancient document from the village of Deir el-Medina includes reasons like tending to a sick child, brewing beer, and even being bitten by a scorpion.
jNM0n TIL When USSR premier Nikita Khrushchev visited IBM's Silicon Valley research facility in 1959 he showed indifference to computing technology, but he was so impressed by their buffet style cafeteria that he instructed factories across the Soviet Union to implement the self service dining concept.