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TIL that Tiny fern has the biggest genome ever recorded. It contains 160 billion base pairs — 50 times more than the human genome.

Read more nature.com

via reddit.com

QNGgE TIL that Tolkien realized he had created a moral dilemma when writing orcs. They're supposed to be a purely evil race for the heroes to cut through without guilt, but they could talk and knew about morality, so by Tolkien's beliefs, they couldn't be pure evil and should be given mercy if possible.
pl6p TIL Jesse Owens, an African-American track athlete who won a gold medal at the 1936 “Nazi Olympics”, said: “Hitler didn’t snub me—it was FDR who snubbed me. The president didn’t even send me a telegram.”
gdR4 TIL that “kummerspeck” is a German term which refers to weight gain from emotional over-eating, and is literally translated as “grief bacon”.
E1DrX TIL one of the oldest statues in Bern, Switzerland is of a guy eating babies, and nobody really knows why it’s there.
Zpj5B TIL How Fedex survived bankruptcy with a $5000 Blackjack gamble by the CEO Fred Smith that won $27,000