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43

TIL that Martin Luther King Jr's great great grandfather was Irish.

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b6JR7 TIL that ants will defend other creatures such as caterpillars from the parasitoid wasp, as the parasites actions would endanger the relationship that the ants have themselves with caterpillars.
X4gE TIL that phrases that use two synonyms to say the same thing (e.g. “will and testament”) are called “legal doublets,” and they exist because during Medieval times, English speakers spoke both French and Latin, but not typically both, and lawyers wanted to avoid ambiguity.
4XLr5 TIL that the Voyager engineers calculated over 10,000 launch windows so that encounters between the craft and the planets on its trajectory didn't happen during Thanksgiving or Christmas, allowing them to stay home for the holidays
jenN TIL that Cartman’s mom, Liane, is named after Trey Parker’s cheating ex-fiancée, thus the jokes about her promiscuity.
1orV TIL the title of the Italian film, Life is Beautiful, came from a Leon Trotsky quote. In exile in Mexico, knowing he was about to be killed by Joseph Stalin’s assassins, he saw his wife in the garden and wrote that, in spite of everything, “life is beautiful”.