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TIL North American arts and crafts store Michaels has seen a 300 per cent sales boost in its beads and jewelry categories to make Friendship bracelets in the days leading up to Taylor Swift concerts. Globally, only 9% of plastic waste is recycled, 50% ends up in landfills

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6vYQ TIL that on its way back from deployment in the Persian Gulf in 2002, the aircraft carrier USS John Stennis stopped in Freemantle, Australia, where her sailors wore out the sex workers at a local brothel, forcing it to close temporarily.
dD579 TIL the homochirality of biological molecules is exclusively a feature of life on Earth. Extraterrestrial samples contain largely racemic compounds, and common organic syntheses always yield racemic mixtures. It is not known to science why that is the case.
MeKM7 TIL Xerox and Cannon created the Machine Identification Code. A digital watermark which certain color laser printers and copiers leave on every single printed page, allowing identification of the device with which a document was printed and giving clues to the originator
VZoZ TIL during WW2 a Soviet Airforce lieutenant who intentionally did not open his parachute survived a fall from the plane of approximately 7,000 meters (23,000 feet)
kJByd TIL the Mediterranean Sea went into a cycle of partial or near complete drying-up from 5.96 to 5.33 million years ago, when the precursor of the Strait of Gibraltar closed off sealing the Sea off from the Atlantic Ocean. The period ended with a flood when the Atlantic reclaimed the basin.