Post * yQrMV — Curious Curator

› added 5 years ago

77

TIL that a large part of eastern Washington State is mostly barren and useless for farming because all the soil got carried away by a series of ancient cataclysmic floods.

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XEArE TIL of Hussain al-Shahristani. An Iraqi who was forced into solitary confinement in prison for 8 years under Saddam Hussein. He kept his sanity by “making up mathematical problems, which he then tried to solve.” He later became Iraq’s minister of higher education and scientific research.

aX4Z TIL that the first documented fire tornado occurred in Canberra, Australia in 2003. As opposed to a fire whirl (fire sucked up into the air), a fire tornado is a literal tornado made of fire.

e07rg TIL the world is safer then ever, and there is data to prove it.

PYbkO TIL that blind people may detect and respond to light if it is a kind of skyblue light at 481nm. "There is more to the eye than rods and cones — the discovery of a third photoreceptor is rewriting the visual rulebook."

MD6a TIL that bees don’t generally die when they sting. They die when they sting a human or other animal with similarly thick skin, but can sting other insects just fine.