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TIL Thomas Jefferson became interested in Indian burial mounds near his Virginia home and decided to excavate them and record his findings. His use of trenching and stratigraphy make it the first Archaeological dig in North America

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xVy57 TIL that the Portuguese man o’ war is not actually a jellyfish, but a hydrozoan siphonophore. It's also not just one organism. It is made up of separate polyp organism colonies called zooids, each serving a specific purpose, like forming tentacles for locomotion or controlling digestion.
0omy TIL Despite basing ‘O Brother, Where art Thou?’ on The Odyssey, neither of the Coen Brothers had ever read the Epic and were only familiar with the plot through adaptations and pop culture references.
K7ga TIL Michael Keaton wasn’t surprised that he was cast as Batman as he initially believed the movie would be like the 1960s tv version with Adam West and only later learned that Batman was a much darker character
NXkmQ TIL from 1807 to 1890 the tiny archipelago of Heligoland in the North Sea was controlled by the British Empire. The British gained control during the Napoleonic Wars, and the islands were ceded to Germany in 1890 in return for various colonial holdings in East Africa.
m1k9M TIL of John Thompson who had both his arms torn off in a farming accident as a teen in 1992. He went inside the house, phoned for help using a pencil in his mouth, then sat in the bathtub to prevent blood from getting on the new carpet. Both arms were reattached, but he can't fully use his hands.