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TIL Nobel winner James Watson wrote "The Double Helix" in a fiction like style to attract young people in science. He originally wanted to title his memoir "Honest Jim", and then "Base Pairs", but his co-discoverer Francis Crick had issues with it

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9Y4wG TIL of the thousand day ordeal of the Marathon Monks of Japan. They run daily marathons for hundreds of days, endure 7.5 days with no food, water, or sleep, and chant 100,000 mantras in front of a scorching fire. They carry a rope and a dagger with which to commit suicide if they fail.
kOQe5 TIL as recently as 1990, single digit phone numbers existed in the UK
rRvvd TIL that Loreta Janeta Velazquez was a Cuban-American woman who masqueraded as a male Confederate soldier during the Civil War. She was in essence a 19th century Mulan.
e0MdE TIL that 79% of bone marrow transplants are basically just more complex blood donations. Only 21% of bone marrow transplants involve sticking a needle into your bones (under anesthesia).
7rZLZ TIL "Phil McNamara was able to capture something not a lot of people get to see: the exact moment an active volcano blows its top, and the attendant shockwave. Filming off the coast of Papa New Guinea, McNamara filmed the start of the eruption of Mount Tavurvur volcano on August 29th, 2014." [Video]