› added 7 years ago

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TIL Sea shanties can be grouped into three types: short haul shanties, for tasks requiring quick pulls; halyard shanties, for heavier work requiring more setup time between pulls; and capstan shanties, for long, repetitive tasks.

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9YaeM TIL In response to the film "Apollo 18", NASA engineer John Schuessler clarified that moon landings ended with Apollo 17 because NASA simply did not have the time or funds to fit in more moon landings after 1972. He also sees no evidence of extraterrestrial life on the Moon
aZy0 TIL that 17th century Europeans used to glue patches to their faces (velvet for the rich, mouse skin for the poor) in order to conceal blemishes or make a fashion statement
E1kP7 TIL that even at 0 Kelvin (absolute zero), atoms continue to vibrate due the Heisenberg uncertainty principle, which states that a particle's momentum cannot be precisely determined if its position is known, and vice versa. Basically, because the atom's position is known at 0K, its momentum can't be
5Y678 TIL of Lady Margaret Beaufort, the mother of King Henry VII. She had her son at just 13 years old after marrying Edmund Tudor, who was 12 years her senior. He died of the plague when she was seven months pregnant. Since she was so young, the birth was extremely difficult.
9YKX7 TIL that airport officials in Bulgaria seized two million baby eels that had been hidden in luggage. The eels, known as elvers, had been declared food items. It’s a critically endangered species and cannot be exported outside the region.