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TIL The melody of Zombie Nation's "Kernkraft 400," chanted by billions in stadiums worldwide, came from a 80's video game

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gVg4 TIL in 1971, Saddam Hussein imported 95,000 tons of grain treated with fungicidal mercury. The grain was intended for planting, but the Iraqis, unable to understand the English and Spanish warnings or the “skull and crossbones” image, baked it into bread. Hundreds died.
ne7dG TIL of Clive Wearing, an acclaimed musician who has serious amnesia after contracting herpes; he can't form memories longer than 30 seconds and always thinks he's just awoken from a coma. Despite this, he can recognise his wife and can still conduct an orchestra.
xVVGk Of all the bodies in our solar system, the sun is probably the one we want to give the widest berth. It gushes radiation, and even though its surface is the coolest part of the star, it burns at about 9,940°F, hot enough to incinerate just about any material. As such, there are no plans to send a manned mission in its direction anytime soon (Mars is much more interesting, anyway), but it can't hurt to figure out at what distance a person would want to turn back. You can get surprisingly close. The sun is about 93 million miles away from Earth, and if we think of that distance as a football field, a person starting at one end zone could get about 95 yards before burning up.
MX0 TIL that Google has started a beta in Kenya, Nigeria, Ghana, Thailand and Uganda called ‘Google trader’ where locals can contact sellers of anything from chicken egg incubators to entire houses.
QJNOe TIL telling ghost stories was a Victorian Christmas tradition that has largely disappeared but survives in "It's the Most Wonderful Time of the Year" and "A Christmas Carol"