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TIL Nikola Tesla's childhood cat, Macak, played a role in his famous contribution to science. Reflecting upon the experience of static electricity after he stroked his cat, he wrote, "Is Nature a gigantic cat? If so, who strokes its back? Day after day I have asked myself, what is electricity?"

4XeB5 TIL about Mariya Oktyabrskaya. When her husband was killed in 1941, she paid for a tank, named it "Fighting Girlfriend," and distinguished herself as a fearless and deadly tank driver, often repairing her tank under heavy fire. After she died in March 1944, she was named a Hero of the Soviet Union.
BVOx TIL that frogs don’t have the ability to swallow, so to get food down their throat, they do ‘the blink’: whereby their eyes sink back in their head and push the food down.
ZpPZY TIL that the fish California grunion lay eggs on sandy beach where they hatch after a fortnight. Grunion runs are graded from 1-5, depending on the number of fish that arrive, the length of the run and how long they mate for. It's impossible to walk on a beach with W5 run without stepping on fish.
Y7JKv TIL the name of the mineral 'Xenotime' (originally 'kenotime' - meaning "vainglory" in greek) is making fun of a chemist who prematurely claimed to have found a new chemical element in the mineral
Zw4B TIL that regardless of what service you get your weather information from, almost all of the data comes from the same place. NOAA has the only nationwide weather radar and operates the only weather satellites in the US. It freely distributes it’s information into the public domain.