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TIL In a study on lung cancer patients, 48% of subjects had quit smoking prior to diagnosis, usually easily, despite prior attempts. Lung cancer tumors secrete a substance that disrupts nicotine addiction, but the study was buried because scientists worried it would encourage people to keep smoking.

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W7pRo TIL there's a dormant volcano in Mississippi called the Jackson Volcano, which is 2,900 feet below the city of Jackson.
DmBp TIL that the 19th century Catholic Church declared “Americanism” a heresy, which included the beliefs in separation of church and state, secularism, etc. This played into American fears at the time that Catholics were too loyal to the Pope and were thus undemocratic, illiberal, and unassimilatable.
rRb6e TIL about Marvin Creamer an American college professor who became the first person to sail around the world without any navigational equipment. He relied on the sun, stars and moon to guide him instead of a compass, sextent, clock or any other type of navigational instrument.
jNd6a TIL that after almost 20 years of battling for a Hubble budget and creating the telescope, and after finally putting it into orbit, the first images NASA received were blurry because the mirror curvature was off by 2.2 thousandth of a millimeter.
9wBjp TIL the M6D Pistol in the game Halo: Combat Evolved was unusually powerful due to Bungie co-founder Jason Jones secretly adding code shortly before release to "change a single number on the pistol" when each game map was loaded.