› added 12 years ago

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TIL All polar bears alive today can trace their ancestry back to one female brown bear who lived in Ireland

Read more wired.co.uk

via reddit.com

pD8e TIL that according to legend, everyone in America used to think tomatoes were poisonous, due to them being a member of the nightshade family. In 1820, New Jersey resident Robert Gibbon Johnson ate tomatoes in front of a large crowd to prove they were edible.
dx5d TIL walking barefoot leads to healthier feet (reduces rate of osteoarthritis & athlete’s foot; improved foot strength, flexibility & mobility) [pdf]
ya1l TIL the word idiot was coined by the ancient Greeks to describe, contemptuously, those people who, even though eligible, did not participate in politics.
wLYwY TIL that a study of Toxoplasma gondii, which is estimated to be infecting around 1,000 people every day in Britain, has found that it makes chimpanzees more attracted to the smell of leopards, their main predators in the wild.
rRJey TIL James Franco has a mutation on a gene that allows him to sleep for about half the time that we normally need