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TIL there's a protein in our cells called PARP-1 that is constantly repairing damaged DNA our cells. But it can't repair the DNA in neurons (including brains) while we're awake. So it accumulates there until we fall asleep. Research now shows this accumulation of PARP-1 is what makes us sleepy.

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n65o TIL that on Oct. 4, 2013 a man named John Constantino, a former Vietnam Vet self-immolated on the National Mall seemingly to protest the Federal government during “the shutdown,” but later the story was redacted to emphasize that he had been battling mental illness.
VM4oD TIL the line bisecting a crescent moon always points directly toward the sun
PRAn TIL about the Georgia Guidestones, a 238k pound monument in Georgia, by some people seen as “the American stonehenge”
g5R7 TIL Until the late 1400s the word ‘girl’ just meant a child of either sex. If you had to differentiate between them, male children were referred to as 'knave girls’ and females were 'gay girls’. Equally, a boy could be called a 'knave child’ and a girl a 'maiden child’.
gNBX TIL superstar Romantic poet Lord Byron called his contemporary, William Wordsworth, William “Turdsworth”