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TIL that the thiomargarita magnifica is the largest bacteria ever discovered, big enough to be seen by the naked eye

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VMKpp TIL Mountain Dew was originally developed as a mixer for liquor. Tennessee bottlers Barney and Ally Hartman developed Mountain Dew as a mixer in the 1940s as they had difficulty in Knoxville obtaining their preferred soda to mix with liquor, preferably whiskey, so they developed their own.
0K0L TIL when Beethoven was challenged to an improvisation duel by one of his rivals named Steibelt, Beethoven took a piece of Steibelt’s music, turned it upside down, played it, then improvised on that theme for over an hour. Steibelt simply left halfway through.
oo7 TIL that a white abolitionist, who would go on to kill and terrorize slave owners across the south, uttered the phrase “by whatever means necessary” 100 years before Malcolm X used a similar phrase.
9YrZQ TIL Richard the Lionheart's mother, Eleanor of Aquitaine, was actually a rare female crusader who would march with her husband. However, their disagreements on battle plans eventually lead to the marriage being annulled, where she then after married a Norman and produced Richard.
7meM TIL that in 2007 China tested a missile and shot down one of their own satellites, accidentally creating 2,087 pieces of space debris on crazy orbits, all of which are now required to be tracked to avoid space collisions