Threeyzmonkeys, Author at I Learned This Today

#139 What are the six great mass extinction events?

February 19, 2022

I learned this today. There have been six mass extinctions on Earth that experts know about. The Great Oxidation Event about 2.4 billion years ago. The Ordovician-Silurian Extinction 440 million years ago. The Devonian Extinction 365 million years ago. The Permian-Triassic Extinction 250 million years ago. The Triassic-Jurassic Extinction 210 million years ago. The Cretaceous-Tertiary […]

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#138 Did pirates really use the Jolly Roger flag?

February 18, 2022

I learned this today. The Jolly Roger was the flag used by pirates, but nobody really knows why it was called the Jolly Roger and there were many different versions of it. We generally think of pirates as being people like Blackbeard and Captain Kidd and most of these pirates operated in the Caribbean. The

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#137 What are stem cells and how do they work?

February 17, 2022

I learned this today. There are different types of stem cells, but they basically work by developing into different types of cells. There are 200 different types of cells in the body, and they all do different tasks. For example, neurons in the brain, white blood cells that fight infection, muscle cells, and the

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#136 What is a letter of marque?

February 16, 2022

I learned this today. A letter of marque was a license from a government for a private citizen to attack and capture vessels of an enemy nation in order to gain reprisal for that country’s actions in a war. It was very expensive for a country to have a standing navy and a lot of

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#135 How does Bluetooth work?

February 15, 2022

I learned this today. Bluetooth is a short range, low power technology that can transmit data over radio waves. Bluetooth works on frequencies in the 2.400 to 2.483.5 GHz short-range radio band. Radio frequencies around the world are generally regulated so that different frequencies don’t get mixed up. That is why different radio stations broadcast

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#134 How does Valium (diazepam) work on the brain?

February 14, 2022

I learned this today. Diazepam is a benzodiazepine drug that works by increasing the amount of a chemical called GABA in the brain to inhibit electrical impulses. GABA is Gamma-aminobutyric acid. It is a chemical that your brain produces. It is an amino acid and is an inhibitory neurotransmitter in the brain. It inhibits brain

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#133 Is coral a plant or an animal?

February 13, 2022

I learned this today. Corals are animals because they don’t produce their own food. Corals are sometimes thought to be rocks and sometimes thought to be plants, but they are neither. They are animals. They are thousands of tiny animals collected together. Because of this, they are known as colonial organisms. They belong to the

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#132 When did the Mafia come to America?

February 12, 2022

I learned this today. The first account of a crime syndicate that was an American Mafia was published in the New Orleans Times in 1869. It could be argued that the Mafia started in Italy during the end of the 16th and the start of the 17th centuries. Its vertical structure, with a don at

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#131 How does a machine gun work?

February 11, 2022

I learned this today. A machine gun works by using the recoil or the gas of the cartridge explosion to reload and re-cock the gun after each shot. There are basically three different types of machine gun: recoil actuated, gas-operated reloading, and externally actuated. Recoil and gas-operated reloading guns follow the same theory, which is

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#130 Why do we have 24 hours in a day, 60 minutes in an hour, and 60 seconds in a minute?

February 10, 2022

I learned this today. We have 24 hours in a day because of Hipparchus. We have 60 seconds in a minute and 60 minutes in an hour because of Claudius Ptolemy, Al-Biruni, and the Babylonians. Before we look at this topic, we have to remember that needing to know the time exactly is a fairly

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Author name: Threeyzmonkeys