› added 7 years ago

101

TIL when the first concrete bridge in Asia was opened in Muvattupuzha(India) in 1914, the chief engineer W H Emrald and his wife sat beneath the bridge in a boat while 15 elephants walked over it to convince the public that the bridge is strong & stable

Read more wikipedia.org

via reddit.com

VBm7k TIL Pierre-Simon Laplace's nebular hypothesis from 1796 is still, with some modification, the prevailing hypothesis for the origin of stars and planetary systems. Laplace proposed that nebulae are future solar systems, waiting to happen
d8On9 TIL that in 427BC Athens sent a ship to Mytilene which had instructions to kill all adult men in the city-state. The next day, Athenians voted to change their decision - a second ship was dispatched. Racing through the night, it reached Mytilene just in time to prevent the massacre from happening.
V790 TIL there is a Truman Show-type village in the Netherlands created for dementia patients.
5VYGP TIL the baby boomers in the 1940s were the first to be dressed in the sex-specific clothing that Americans are familiar with today. Boys and girls were dressed like miniature men and women instead of uniformly in children’s dresses. Pink became the girls’ color, blue the boys’.
16arW TIL about a deep-sea fish called the stoplight loosejaw. It is so called because its lower jaw has no floor and it shines red light from photophores under its eyes, which it uses like headlights. Most deep-sea creatures can't detect it because no red light filters down to them from the sun.