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TIL that when the first platypus specimen was sent to England in 1799, British scientists believed it was an elaborate hoax and even tried to pry its duck-like bill off, convinced someone had stitched it on.

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7eGP TIL there’s $3 Billion dollars worth of platinum at the bottom of the ocean near Cape Cod.
wL17o TIL Theoretical physicist Abraham (Avi) Loeb made the case that microbes could have been ejected into space from earth by asteroid impacts billions of years ago, in a reverse kind of panspermia, theoretically leading to life being spread across the solar system or further.
8e6r4 TIL most fossil fuels aren't made of dead dinosaurs, but are actually far older than dinosaurs.
W7xDX TIL in 2007 a man had avoided going to jail. He had noticed a void space in a mall, and converted it to an apartment. He lived in it 4 years (rent free.) before he was noticed. He only got probation, and isn’t allowed in the malls area.
4X4ko TIL that Boston Corbett - the man who shot and killed President Abraham Lincoln's assassin, John Wilkes Booth - castrated himself with a pair of scissors in order to avoid sexual temptation and remain holy