4kQMN TIL the gene that builds the mammalian placenta came from a virus. A retrovirus infected our ancestors over 100 million years ago, integrated into their DNA, and the gene encoding its cell-fusion protein got repurposed to bond mother and fetus.
x6GBk TIL that the AWW once had a hotline to their test kitchen for parents struggling with cakes from the Children's Birthday Cake Book.
epXdD TIL Among his many other talents and interests, Pope Leo X was reportedly an "excelent musician". He also enjoyed improvising latin verses on the spot
VBDdk TIL that the flag etiquette for Memorial Day is to lower it to half staff from sunrise to noon
X0ygD TIL Utah's approved hyperscale AI data center called The Stratos Project will span over 40,000 acres and is set to generate 9 gigawatts of power daily i.e. the heat equivalent of detonating 23 atomic bombs every single day.
OGdLY TIL cancer can get cancer and it's called a hypertumor. hypertumors could theortically get harnessed and used to kill cancer sometime in the future as it steals the initial tumor's nutrients and starves it
69xMX TIL that the SpongeBob episode "Mid-Life Crustacean" was removed from the Nickelodeon rotation and Paramount+ because it included a "panty raid" scene.
wo1ro TIL that the Huns had no writing system of their own, and so we don’t know for sure where they came from, why they came to Europe, what they believed in, what their government looked like, or what ultimately happened to them.
R5Gd7 TIL there was an alternate reality game (ARG) from 2006 where an objective was to find a man using just his first name and one photo. It was completed in 2020
W7mdY TIL Padre Guilherme is a Portuguese priest who conducts DJ sets and has been known to mix messages from Pope Leo into his dance music sets.
9w97G TIL about Nicholas D. McKay who, in 1955, while chaperoning a school dance, wrapped masking tape around a toilet paper tube affixed to a coat hanger to remove lint from his tuxedo. A year later, he founded the Helmac Products Corporation to manufacture his new invention: the lint roller.
nWY5b TIL Michael 'Tarzan' Fomenko, an eccentric, hermetic Australian bushman who canoed solo across the Torres Strait in his 20s and spent over five decades living mainly outdoors in the rainforests of FNQ, Australia