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TIL that in October 1990, the British tunnel worker Graham Fagg was the first person to cross the English channel by land since the Ice Age.

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loxyr TIL that Cement is the most widely used material in existence and is the second most consumed resource on earth, behind water.
R5xe1 TIL Engineers traded Grateful Dead set lists and discussed the setup of the band's concert speaker system on ARPANET, a precursor to the Internet. This led to tape trading over the File Transfer Protocol, and the Internet Archive began to add Grateful Dead shows in 1995.
e7NJ TIL bacteria outnumbers human cells by at least 10-1 in our bodies. Damn it feels good to be a superorganism.
v1NEj TIL that Hawaii's first queen's first time running the country was marked by a smallpox outbreak and that the decisive action she took to stop the spread (closing all ports) drew the ire of rich sugarcane plantation owners and eventually lead to the coup that overthrew her.
QJJya TIL the use of bowls to house goldfish comes from a misunderstanding of Chinese display vessels--small, temporary containers to show guests goldfish that were otherwise housed in ponds. Fishbowls are so detrimental to goldfish health that they are prohibited by places like Rome for animal cruelty.