› added 1 month ago

5

TIL that chainsaws were invented for childbirth

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yVeBl TIL Minneapolis uses a dozen clams to test the cleanliness of the city's drinking water
p8aMb TIL that the Greenland shark is deemed biologically immortal. With the estimated life span of up to a 500 years, reaching sexual maturity at around 150 years of age, the Greenland shark is the longest living vertebrate on the planet. Not a single specimen has been observed dying from old age.
v17M8 TIL in Belgium and France, Farmers still recover tens of thousands of unexploded shells and ordinance From WW1 that get pushed up by normal ground shifting (frost thrust, etc) and plowed up in farming fields. They call it "The Iron Harvest". They expect this to continue for hundreds of years.
vPpQj TIL that Greenland is part of North America. I've always considered Greenland part of Europe because the Kingdom of Denmark governs it, and it is technically in the European Union. But alas, it's geographically North American.
d89o7 TIL In June of Year Without Summer (1816), a group of writers had to stay indoors in Switzerland because of “incessant rain”. As a result of a contest to write the scariest story, Mary Shelley wrote Frankenstein, Lord Byron wrote A Fragment, a precursor to Dracula