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TIL that Tex-Mex has surpassed Italian as the most popular food genre in the United States

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Oo4d4 TIL that the United States by far has the most tornadoes in the world, averaging 1,274 per year in the last decade while Canada reports nearly 100 annually.
LQ7br TIL that the world’s first traffic lights, installed outside London’s Houses of Parliament in 1868, were gas-lit. They used semaphore arms by day and lamps at night, operated by a policeman. Weeks later they exploded, injuring him. Traffic lights weren’t tried again in Britain for almost 60 years.
XEgED TIL about how we test toxic chemicals without using animals: instead, we use data mining software to mathematically predict toxic effects based on the molecule's structure.
VwmZ TIL that the pistol shrimp has a claw that when it snaps shut creates a pressure wave and momentarily reaches the temperature of the sun.
x6LVk TIL in the '40s theatrical producer John Reber promoted a plan to build two dams to change most of San Francisco Bay into two freshwater lakes. He got a lot of support, but the US Army Corps of Engineers built a giant working model of the bay to show how this plan was a terrible idea