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So I saw @fontseeker's icon while scrolling the dash and the ADHD got this idea which I sent them in an ask. But then I thought it might be a fun thing to pose to tumblr at large! (so sorry to double tap you with this!)

BUT

my dragon hoard is broadly stories of all kinds. But there is a large section of that hoard that specifically the random fun little tidbits from the things people study for recreation.

So reblog this and tell me either in the post or tags, I wanna know!

Thinking of the things you nerdily research for fun, what is something that you found/learned that made you go "oh that's dope/cool how they did that/super pretty/wild history"? Just one of those little things you weren't aware of before but made you happy to learn or see it, as general or esoterically niche as you want. Bonus points if you had some kind of external reaction like verbally saying "fuck that's awesome!", or slapping your knee, or something of the like.

I'll go first! For context, my wife and I live in a 1948 cabin on roughly 10-12 acres that is at least 70% just hill. I've been doing a lot of research on different aspects and types of land management because while our land is 70% hill, it's workable hill, and with some (initially backbreaking work) it'll be an easily workable hill for gardening and (hopefully!!) A lil pond I can swim a little in. I've also been digging through Pinterest a lot recently because I like that I can find tutorials on how to do so many insanely different things. These are related and unrelated things.

So one of the things I've been looking into various rain collection/water management techniques/systems, and last night stumbled on this dude's blog post from living in Venice in 2018 talking about how while there was an aqueduct built to the city in the mid/late 1800s that now is the main water supply, historically that is not how they managed fresh water.

Under a readmore because I do go on a little bit of a ramble explaining the old system, click for your fun fact of the day!

I knew Venice is—famously even—a bunch of islands in a lagoon. I knew a lagoon is a salt water environment. I've known all this for several decades at this point. In fact, I know a lot more about Venice than this because it is a city in which a lot of my various interests tend to pass through at some point. In all this time I don't think I ever stopped to question where the drinking water came from. So immediately I had to read the whole blog post in fascination because it's actually so simple in how it works and so smart and I'm like over here cheering on the homies who worked out a great and simple solution thousands of years ago, and thanking them because it helps me now!

This illustration comes from the previously linked blog post. Basically what they'd do is dig these wells that don't collect groundwater (which is again, salty. Do not drink the salt water, kids.) No, these wells are actually rain collection cisterns! Like many people across history and cultures without reliable access to safe ground water, capturing water from the air became essential. So the Venetians would do this by digging these craters and sealing the bottom with clay to keep good rainwater in and bad lagoon water out (an issue they constantly battled and I imagine still do). Next they filled the crater with levels of different sands until they hit street level, but Crucially! The well cistern in the center is set at the highest point and the ground slopes towards the corner grates. Last they'd build the brick cisterns underneath the drains and well, and finish tiling. I imagine the rest of the courtyard would also have additional engineering to support this too.

Then when it rained, the water would get corralled to the grates where it filled the attached cistern and slowly leech into the sand, filter through the sand towards the well cistern, and finally get to the well cistern scrubbed of a lot of nasties and good enough to drink!

It's such a simple system but it was super effective and (while a bit complicated to design based on resources and needs as well as being just intense manual labor) easily reparable!! And I finished reading that blog happy that someone decided to take the time to nerd out about this information because it's cool to learn how people do things now and in the past! I gotta admire the determination to face a problem and figure out a way to solve it, and then to do so with clever simplicity makes it hot.

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