8 Mildly Impressive Facts You Won’t Believe Were Discovered on Reddit – How Many Will You Bother To Remember? (3 of 5)

A “moment” is an actual unit of time equal to 90 seconds

When we tell our friends and enemies that we’ll be back “in a moment,” we generally think of this as “several minutes” or “never,” depending on whether the people we are interacting with can be described as the former or latter. But one Reddit know-it-all let it be known that “moment” is an actual, measurable unit of time, not a mere colloquialism for time briefly passing. Back in the medieval days, rather than dividing an hour into 60 minutes, astronomers were inclined to measure in moments, which came out to 40 an hour, and thus if you are brilliant at math like we are, you’ll find that one moment equals 90 seconds. Or you can just trust us on this one.

The Eiffel Tower grows in the summer and shrinks in the winter

The Eiffel Tower is taller in the summer than in the winter. What? How? Wizard Magic? The explanation is pretty simple, and the Reddit community would be happy to explain if you have a few moments of your life that you don’t mind ever getting back. Iron – which the world’s most overrated touristy structure is made of – expands in heat and contracts in cold. As a result, the Eiffel Tower “grows” around 15 centimeters (6 inches) in length during the summer season. Once winter arrives, it returns to its original height. Impressed? Not really?