› added 10 years ago

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TIL scientists have successfully genetically engineered American chestnut trees to resist the blight that annihilated them, bringing back a species from functional extinction.

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QJK0a TIL the United States detonated 67 nuclear bombs on, in and above the Marshall Islands. They later cleaned up contaminated soil on Enewetak Atoll, only to later deposit 130 tons of soil from an irradiated Nevada testing site in the same place.
5Vlpr TIL of Hank the Tank, a black bear accused of breaking into over two dozen Lake Tahoe homes and threatened with euthanasia before later being exonerated by DNA evidence.
wo8Mo TIL that between 1945 and 1947, the US government injected 30 civilians with radioactive elements, most of whom gave no consent and had no knowledge of what the injection actually was
NJZM TIL of Pando, a grove of aspen trees in Utah that is actually a single organism with 40,000 stems (trunks). Some experts believe that Pando may be up to a million years old.
7rD4X TIL that Gene Wilder got into comedy and acting because of his mother's heart condition. His mother's doctor told him to 'Try to make her laugh,' to make her feel better, leading to his conscious efforts to make other people laugh.