› added 4 months ago

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TIL that more than 16 million official U.S. military personnel records were destroyed when the sixth floor of the National Personnel Records Center caught fire in 1973. The archive did not have a sprinkler system, smoke detectors, or firewalls

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NL9P TIL that whale milk has 30-50% fat content and is often the consistency of toothpaste
Me0OW TIL that in 1657 Otto von Guericke, having pumped the air from two copper hemispheres, creating a vacuum, showed that two teams of horses could not pull apart "nothing at all."
E1Mkd TIL the DNA Doe Project has helped identify over 24 victims. Some families receive closure after 20+ years. Victims range from a bootlegger found in 1979 to a woman thrown from a truck in 2017. The volunteers work from donations. You can also help by submitting your DNA results to GEDmatch.
kGE1 TIL the movie ‘A Nightmare on Elm Street’ was based on news articles of Cambodian refugees refusing to fall asleep due to nightmares. Many of them ended up dying in their sleep of unexplained causes.
WBZo TIL bald eagles build the largest nests of any bird; the largest nest ever found was 10 feet wide and 20 feet deep (3m x 6m) and weighed more than 2 tonnes!