› added 6 years ago

504

TIL that magenta does not exist in the visible light spectrum and does not have a corresponding wavelength, so your brain interprets it as "not green"

Read more gizmodo.com

via reddit.com

BaD TIL, upon the advent of wood [400mya], it took fungi 50mil yrs to evolve a way to decompose it. Until then, wood just piled up, never to decay. It is this single fact that led to the Carboniferous period [BBC doc.]
K7m6 TIL at the 1912 Olympics, a marathon runner quit and went home to Japan without telling officials and was considered a missing person in Sweden for 50 years. In 1966, he was invited to complete the marathon. His time: 54 years, 8 months, 6 days, 5 hours, 32 minutes and 20.379 seconds.
EyZp TIL the Bank of England produces banknotes named “giant” and “titan”, worth £1m and £100m respectively, used exclusively within the banking system
7rD4X TIL that Gene Wilder got into comedy and acting because of his mother's heart condition. His mother's doctor told him to 'Try to make her laugh,' to make her feel better, leading to his conscious efforts to make other people laugh.
w5ZJ TIL Mark Twain told an interviewer that he was not actually Mark Twain, but Mark Twain’s twin brother, but since his parents couldn’t tell which one drowned in the bath tub when they were babies, the parents decided that the one who lived must have been Mark.