Shocking Facts: The U.S. state of Kansas is flatter than a pancake, according to a 2003 tongue-in-cheek study in Annals of Improbable Research.

Researchers compared topographic data to a pancake's surface using a laser profilometer.

#Geography

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Shocking Facts: The 1977 'Wow! signal' lasted exactly 72 seconds, matching the observation window of the Big Ear radio telescope, and has never been detected again.

Astronomer Jerry Ehman circled the printout with 'Wow!' after the signal at 1420 MHz exceeded background noise by 30 sigma.

#Space

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Shocking Facts: The word 'glitch' entered English via U.S. astronauts describing a voltage spike in Mercury and Gemini spacecraft, coined by engineer John Glenn.

Glenn popularized it in the 1960s from the Yiddish 'glitshn' (to slip), and it appeared in the 1965 book 'Into Orbit'.

#Tech

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Shocking Facts: The world's oldest known musical instrument is a 40,000-year-old bone flute found in a German cave in 2008.

Made from a griffon vulture's wing bone, it suggests music predates agriculture.

#Research

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Shocking Facts: In 1850, a single lightning strike in Milan set off a chain reaction that detonated 1.5 tons of gunpowder in a castle, killing 40 people and damaging the Duomo.

The strike hit a powder magazine in the Castello Sforzesco during a storm.

#History

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Shocking Facts: The human brain can process images seen for as little as 13 milliseconds, according to a 2014 MIT study.

Participants could identify a series of images shown at 13ms intervals, faster than a blink.

#Psychology

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Shocking Facts: The English language has no official spelling rules; most 'rules' come from historical conventions.

This is why words like 'ghoti' can be spelled to sound like 'fish' (gh as in tough, o as in women, ti as in nation).

#Language

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Shocking Facts: The word 'candidate' comes from Latin 'candidatus', meaning 'white-robed', because Roman office-seekers wore white togas.

The color symbolized purity, but also meant they were 'whitewashed' of their true intentions.

#Language

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Shocking Facts: The Andean condor can fly for over 5 hours without flapping its wings.

It uses thermal updrafts to glide, covering up to 170 km in a single flight.

#Animals

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Shocking Facts: The first known computer bug was an actual moth found in a Harvard Mark II computer in 1947.

Operators taped the moth into the logbook, coining the term 'debugging'.

#Tech

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Shocking Facts: The word 'quarantine' comes from the Italian 'quaranta giorni', meaning 40 days, the period ships were isolated during the Black Death.

#Language

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Shocking Facts: The 'Great Molasses Flood' of 1919 in Boston was caused by a storage tank that had been insufficiently tested; its failure was later attributed to a02% steel deficiency.

A 2016 Harvard study concluded the tank's builder ignored warnings and used thinner steel than required, causing the deadly 8-meter wave.

#History

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You're always seeing the Sun as it was 8 minutes ago ☀️

#Space

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Nature is weird 🟫

#Animals

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History doesn't happen in the order you think 🏛

#History

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🪶 The war that emus won

In 1932, Australian farmers asked for help: about 20,000 emus were destroying their wheat fields.

The army sent soldiers with machine guns. The birds scattered, ran fast and kept coming back. After weeks of trying, the operation was called off.

It went down in history as the Great Emu War, and the emus are usually named the winners.

#History

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Imagine your birthday coming before tomorrow 🪐

#Space

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