› added 6 years ago

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TIL A rare mutation among the Bajau people lets them stay underwater longer: natural selection at the PDE10A gene has increased spleen size in the Bajau, providing them with a larger reservoir of oxygenated red blood cells.

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YpDVP TIL that on 9/11/2001, North East Air Defense Sector commanding officer Kevin Nasypany remarked "The hijack's not supposed to be for another hour" because they had scheduled a simulation involving politically motivated asylum-seekers hijacking a plane & landing it on a Cuba-like island
x68k7 TIL the plane which dropped the atomic bomb in WW2, the B-29 Superfortress, was more expensive to develop ($3 billion) than the Manhattan Project ($1.9 billion).
v16WK TIL in 2015 Starbucks tried to encourage more customers to bring their own cups but instead fewer did
RRwQ TIL that one of the leading lights of the Gun Control movement had to withdraw his work from publication and had a prestigious national history award rescinded due to false, unethical and fraudulent research
vjxr TIL of the “double-tap” drone strike, where a drone attacks once, waits for people to gather to help survivors and then attacks the same spot again