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TIL there are about 1,500 species of cicadas known. There are those that appear yearly in midsummer, and there are also the so-called "periodic" cicadas. They appear at prime number intervals - 7 years, 13 years and 17 years. Once every 221 years, the 13-year cycle and 17-year cycle cicadas overlap.

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yRae TIL in 1954 Soviet prisoners overthrew their guards and, for 40 days, established a gulag republic with a democratically elected provisional government, marriages between male and female prisoners, indigenous religious ceremonies and a general flowering of art and culture.
4X6W5 TIL: Donkey Kong not developed by Nintendo but rather a subcontracting company that also made Sega's Congo Bongo and Zaxxon. They successfully sued after Nintendo use their source code to create Donkey Kong Jr. without them.
4kg0N TIL May 2 1922 Gen. Montgomery led a convoy to Macroom Castle, Cork where he ordered the IRA to surrender 4 captives or they would raze the town. In response, the Commander told him to leave “within 10 minutes”. Monty then looked up to see he had been quietly surrounded by Irish Volunteers. He fled.
BgaRe TIL the only public commercial hovercraft service in the world connects Portsmouth with the Isle of Wight
dKD8 TIL that the Red Hot Chili Peppers and their producer once set aside $2,000 out of the $5,000 EMI gave them for a demo tape so they could have money to spend on heroin and cocaine