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TIL that Josef Stalin fired, imprisoned, or executed 3,000 biologists because he preferred the research of a guy who denied the existence of genes ard natural selection, and thought that rye could be transformed into wheat. Soviet crop yields declined during his tenure.

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VBNYG TIL that Dryococelus australis, a stick insect considered extinct since 1920, was rediscovered in 2001 in the only bush in Ball's pyramid–an uninhabited islet in the Pacific Ocean between Australia and New Zealand, and the tallest volcanic stack in the world.
9wOEX TIL In rural regions of West and Central Africa, bushmeat constitutes 80–90% of animal protein intake. Bushmeat means meat from wild mammals, reptiles, amphibians and birds that live in the jungle, savannah or wetlands, contributing to biodiversity loss because there is growing demand abroad
6EWrQ TIL that Bathsheba Spooner (February 15, 1746 – July 2, 1778) was the first woman executed in the United States following the Declaration of Independence. She petitioned for a postponement, citing her pregnancy, but 14 midwives swore she wasn't with child. A postmortem exam showed she was pregnant.
v1nRr TIL that there are no commercial king crab farming operations because, in part, these crabs go through a violently cannibalistic adolescence and have to be housed individually to survive it, which is too expensive large scale.
jNVZE TIL that in 1946, a trapped moth caused a malfunction in the early computer which resulted in the term 'bug' to be coined for all software errors.