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TIL Darwin suffered a curious denial about his mother’s death, once writing in a condolence letter “never in my life having lost one near relation” and during a Scrabble-like game, when another player added ‘M’ to ‘OTHER’, he stared long at the board then cried: ‘There's no such word as M-OTHER!’.

rNJeo TIL in 2023 a massive pumpkin named ‘Michael Jordan’ squashed the world record for the heaviest gourd at the World Championship Pumpkin Weigh-Off in California. Travis Gienger, a Minnesota horticultural teacher, earned $30,000 in prize money. His 2,749lb pumpkin beat the previous record by 47lb.
oBQlL TIL doctors carried out an emergency C-Section on a dying car crash victim only to discover she was not pregnant. Her "protruding stomach" was due to previous surgery to treat spinal bifida
PYa1V TIL that during World War II, Lockheed employed the skills of Disney, Paramount, and 20th Century Fox Studios to disguise one of their production plants to look like an ordinary California suburb from the air.
raK1 TIL The domesticated dog evolved from a tamer version of the gray wolf. Based on DNA evidence, researchers currently believe the dog was domesticated in Asia at least 15,000 years ago, with some scientists arguing that dogs and humans have been partners for as long as 100,000 years.
M7eBa TIL an octopus mermaid (Such as Ursula from Disney's The Little Mermaid) is called a "Cecaelia", a modern term derived primarily from a black-and-white comic in Vampirella Magazine from the early 1970s featuring a woman/octopus hybrid character named Cilia.