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TIL cicada wings shed water, dirt, and bacteria and are anti-reflective to avoid detection by predators using nanopillars 4000x thinner than human hair and waxy substances

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glN8 TIL Christianity existed in China as early as 635 AD
XEOyX TIL the kilogram is currently defined as the mass of a platinum-iridium cylinder called the International Prototype Kilogram, which was made in 1879 and is stored in a special vault in France. There exist several dozen official replicas, also called prototypes.
5d4R TIL Canadian botanist Charles Budd Robinson was killed due to his bad language skill. When he asked a village boy to chop down a coconut (kelapa), he mistakenly asked the boy to chop down a head (kepala). The villagers mistook him for a headhunter and killed him.
rR4ld TIL Costa Rica is an uninterrupted democracy since 1948, has no army, is the 12th-happiest country in the world and produces 98% of its electricity from renewable sources.
Po1E TIL that during WWII, Bicycle playing cards were made so that, when submerged in water, they could be peeled apart to reveal parts of a map inside. These decks were given to POWs, so that if they escaped, they could assemble a full map out of the cards.