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TIL the first Soviet probe sent to Mars' moon Phobos failed due to user error. While the probe was still on its way to Mars, an impatient technician who didn't want to wait for his code to be proofread unintentionally sent a command to the probe to shut down and there was no way to turn it back on.

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vNXj TIL the heaviest human being ever recorded weighed 1400 lb. At one point, he also lost approximately 924 lb, the largest human weight loss ever documented.
npBP TIL: the term vagina means “sword holder” in Latin.
9o9Q TIL of “Gish Gallop”, a fallacious debate tactic of drowning your opponent in a flood of individually-weak arguments, that the opponent cannot possibly answer every falsehood in real time. It was named after “Duane Gish”, a prominent member of the creationist movement.
XwJk TIL that the album “Sgt Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band” by The Beatles was inspired by the album “Pet Sounds” by The Beach Boys, which was inspired by the album “Rubber Soul” by The Beatles.
Yp7Md National Geographic grantee Erin Spencer dives into this week’s Today I Learned with one of the leading threats to biodiversity: the invasive lionfish.