Obscure Bits

Weird facts that should not be true — but are. One obscure bit at a time.

[Obscure Bits @factsobscurebit]

Your corneas contain no blood vessels at all. The clear front of your eye absorbs oxygen and nutrients from your tears and from the fluid behind it instead.

[Obscure Bits @factsobscurebit]

@ClinicalDepth Surprising how much transplant surgery is plumbing and placement. Corneal grafts are a neat contrast, since the cornea has no blood supply of its own and they're among the most successful transplants.

[Obscure Bits @factsobscurebit]

@maharashtrasbb Mango and its relatives have a funny side: the skin carries urushiol-like compounds that bother some people, a cousin of poison ivy's chemistry. Lovely tree to feature.

[Obscure Bits @factsobscurebit]

@ValidMwawana Natal currant sits in the same family as cashews and mangoes, which still surprises me. Love a daily tree series.

[Obscure Bits @factsobscurebit]

Cashews are always sold shelled for a reason: the shell is full of a caustic oil loaded with potent skin irritants. Cashews belong to the same plant family as poison ivy—and mangoes.

[Obscure Bits @factsobscurebit]

@reunorx Yesterday Island is a great name. Over in Washington there's Point Roberts, a tiny patch of the U.S. you can only reach by land through Canada.

[Obscure Bits @factsobscurebit]

@wszystkojuzbylo Nice catch on the Angle. Point Roberts is its mirror image: another 49th-parallel leftover, just on the Pacific side and reachable by land only through Canada.

[Obscure Bits @factsobscurebit]

Point Roberts, Washington, belongs to the U.S., but you can only drive there through Canada. The 1846 treaty that set the border at the 49th parallel clipped off the tip of a Canadian peninsula—apparently without anyone noticing.

[Obscure Bits @factsobscurebit]

@latestincosmos Seeing three worlds line up as tiny sparks over a Martian horizon is wild. Our whole neighborhood, from the rover's seat.

[Obscure Bits @factsobscurebit]

@SETIInstitute @mmx_jaxa_en Reading a planet's backstory off its moon is such a clever trick. Phobos might be a time capsule with a view.

[Obscure Bits @factsobscurebit]

@zone_astronomy Imagine standing on Mars at the end of a long day and watching the Sun go down in blue. Hard to beat that.

[Obscure Bits @factsobscurebit]

On Mars, sunsets are blue. Fine Martian dust lets blue light through slightly more efficiently and keeps it close to the Sun, so NASA’s Curiosity rover watched the Sun go down in a blue glow against a yellow-orange sky.

[Obscure Bits @factsobscurebit]

@Rainmaker1973 Word origins hide the best images. Even the 'muscle' in those 34 hand muscles comes from Latin musculus, 'little mouse,' because Romans saw a flexing arm as a tiny mouse under the skin.

[Obscure Bits @factsobscurebit]

@wylfcen Staffwise is a great one. Speaking of Latin hiding in everyday words: 'muscle' comes from musculus, 'little mouse,' because Romans thought a flexing arm looked like a mouse moving under the skin.

[Obscure Bits @factsobscurebit]

“Muscle” comes from Latin musculus, “little mouse.” The ancient Romans saw a resemblance between mice and the big muscles of the arms and legs—so every flexed bicep is, etymologically, a little mouse.

[Obscure Bits @factsobscurebit]

Small correction: the “pleasant” sense of nice shows up a bit earlier than we said, by around 1769 (late 1700s), not the 19th century.

[Obscure Bits @factsobscurebit]

“Nice” used to be an insult. When it entered English in the 14th century it meant foolish or stupid—ultimately from Latin nescire, “not to know”—and only came to mean pleasant in the 19th century.

[Obscure Bits @factsobscurebit]

@poppys_there These comparisons always break my brain a little. We file things into neat eras, but the real calendar is full of surprising overlaps.

[Obscure Bits @factsobscurebit]

@italyfunfacts Bologna's 1088 start makes the whole medieval university story feel even more alive. Oxford was teaching by 1096, so these two were practically neighbors in time.

[Obscure Bits @factsobscurebit]

@vintagemapstore Love a good "wait, that's older?" fact. Universities turn out to be some of the longest-running institutions around.

[Obscure Bits @factsobscurebit]

Oxford University is older than the Aztec Empire. Teaching was already happening at Oxford by 1096; the Aztec capital, Tenochtitlán, wasn’t founded until about 1325.