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TIL The Hubble Telescope is using Spermaceti (whale oil) to lubricate its parts due to whale oil's capacity to withstand extremely cold temperatures without coagulation.

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8eEQV TIL “Kiss and Cry” is the name for the area where figure skaters await the announcement of their performance score
8e8x8 TIL the American Chestnut Tree was king of the Eastern U.S. forests that could grow 120ft (36.5m) tall and 16ft (4.9m) across until a blight arrived in 1904. It took only 40 short years for the disease to bring to extinction the estimated 4 billion ancient giants towering from Georgia to Maine.
X0JA6 TIL in 2012 an Oregon woman found a letter from a Chinese labor camp prisoner in a box of Halloween decorations she bought from Kmart. She publicized the letter. The man, who had been released in 2010, saw a news story about it and wrote another letter just for her, thanking her for doing that.
jNBAp TIL that the 1939 classic "The Wizard of Oz" cost so much to make and promote that MGM did not profit from it until a 1949 re-release
ARXn TIL: 2,000 mice were parachuted into Guam to kill snake invaders. The mice were dead and pumped full of acetaminophen which killed the snakes.