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182

TIL that there are photosynthesizing animals - and they are already dying out :(

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4XPgb TIL A mathematician named Nicolas Bourbaki who has made many strides in mathematics, never even was a real person, but was a collective pseudonym for a group of mathematicians who wrote their own textbooks
R54x7 TIL that in the 1830s, ketchup was sold as medicine, claiming to cure ailments like indigestion and diarrhea. It was Dr. John Cook Bennett who added tomatoes to ketchup, previously a fish-based sauce, and promoted its medicinal properties.
e0kmL TIL: The first death in WWII was Franciszek Honiok, a German of Polish descent. The Gestapo murdered him and left his body at a radio station that the Gestapo, dressed in Polish uniforms, attacked. The body helped "prove" Polish aggression to justify the Nazi's invasion of Poland the next day.
epNRD TIL researchers found that people couldn't tell the difference between human & AI-generated poetry, and even preferred the latter. AI-generated poems scored higher than their human-written counterparts in attributes such as “creativity”, “atmosphere” and “emotional quality”.
kJpB1 TIL there is enough actinide metal (thorium and uranium) on Earth to sustain Breeder Reactors, which produce more fissile material than they consume, leading to enough fuel to satisfy the world's energy needs at 1983 levels for 5-billion years, making nuclear energy effectively renewable