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TIL when Sophie Rutschmann of the University of Strasbourg discovered a mutated gene that causes an adult fruit fly to die within two days after it is infected with certain bacteria, she named the gene "Kenny" in honor of the South Park character, who dies in almost every early episode.

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Ow7a TIL that the Dodd Frank Consumer Protection Act had a clause in it called the Eddie Murphy Rule to prevent insider trading in the commodities market, in reference to the movie Trading Places.
NWj1 TIL of a device called the Salmon Cannon that uses a pressure differential to suck up a fish, send it through a tube at up to 22 mph, and then shoot it out the other side. This allows the fish to bypass dams and get upstream to spawn.
yQ5va TIL the first use of the word “selfie” in print was in 2002 when an Australian student posted a picture of his split lip after a drunken party. “Sorry about the focus, it was a selfie,” he wrote on an online forum.
rNX5e TIL Peruvian rubber baron Carlos Scharff, once referred to as “the most notorious of all rubber gatherers in the Upper Amazon region, “ was killed during a mutiny that occurred on Peruvian Independence Day in 1909.
xAbw TIL Bayer sold HIV and Hepatitis C contaminated blood products that caused up to 10,000 people in U.S.A alone to contract HIV. After they found out they pulled it off the shelves in the U.S. and sold it to countries in Asia and Latin America so they wouldn’t lose money from it.