weirdfact

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TIL: Diamonds are flammable.

Which I mean, makes sense, because they're made of the same stuff as coal, but like, wow. What a visual!

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The concept of alphabetic writing was invented by a middle-eastern migrant worker.

(source)

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The country of Monaco (514 acres/1.96 km2) is smaller than Manhattan's Central Park (843 acres/ 3.41 km2).

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Even though the Chinese knew about giant pandas for millennia, westerners had never heard about them until 1896, when a Frenchman brought home a panda skin. However, due to the animals strange black-and-white coat, most people believed that the fur had been painted, and that the whole thing was a hoax. It wasn't widely accepted as a real animal until 1927, when an expedition of westerners saw one in the wild.

Conclusion: 100 years ago, the panda was as "real" to westerners as bigfoot is today.

(source)

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Each one of your cells contains SIX FEET of DNA.

(source)

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By the beginning of the 19th century, tuberculosis, or "consumption," had killed one in seven of all people that had ever lived. 

(source)

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Scientifically speaking, rubies and sapphires are the same mineral (corundum). Both are made of alumina and oxygen, but they just differ in color. When a corundum is red, it is classified as a ruby, and when it’s blue, it is called a sapphire. Rubies are red colored mainly because of the presence of the chromium element. Sapphires are blue when they contain traces of iron and titanium. (Source)

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The lost rivers of London that have now been built over.

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“Centipedes are long, thin arthropods with one pair of legs per body segment. Despite "centi" in their name, which implies 100 legs, centipedes can have fewer than 20 legs to more than 300 legs, but they always have an odd number of pairs of legs.“

(source)

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TUMBLR I HAVE JUST LEARNED SOMETHING AMAZING AND MUST INFLICT IT IN YOU

There is a Japanese water beetle called Regimbartia attenuata. It has developed an incredible adaptation to be being eaten by pond frogs.

It walks out the frog’s butt.

The beetles get swallowed whole, and usually that would be considered Kinda Fatal, but this particular species is just like “DID YOU THINK A FROG’S DIGESTIVE TRACT COULD HOLD ME?!” and proceeds to walk through the frog’s intestines, then presumably stimulate the frog’s hind gut with its legs so that the frog poops. The beetles emerge headfirst and 93% of them survive and live on for weeks afterward.

Apparently some beetles can do this obstacle course in six minutes! (Usually takes a few hours, but some people will speedrun ANYTHING.)

Isn’t that COOL?!

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See link for larger version of map.

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