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TIL modern people get similar amounts of sleep to people from pre-industrial times, but the extra exposure to artificial light means we sleep worse

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18Nd TIL one whale carcass can support other forms of life for 50 to 75 years, which is comparable to the lifespan of the whale itself.
xLy0 TIL that the company that makes the Etch a Sketch was on the verge of bankruptcy when it agreed to let its drawing toy be featured in Toy Story 2. Although the scene featuring an Etch a Sketch was only 12 seconds long, it resulted in a 20 percent sales bump that helped to save the company.
R1bj TIL During the “secret war” waged by the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) from 1964 to 1973 against communist and nationalist forces in Laos, more bombs were dropped on this rural nation of poor farmers than all the explosives dropped on Germany and Japan in the Second World War.
lomEB TIL Stalin loved Charlie Chaplin movies, and even cried at the last scene of City Lights, but he banned The Great Dictator from screening in the USSR. Stalin apparently was afraid that the image of the dictator Adenoid Hynkel would bring up an unwanted comparison – not to Hitler, but to himself.
BrMmL TIL that in 2003, an Airbus A300 cargo plane landed safely in Baghdad despite being struck by a missile on the left wing, losing a fuel tank, and losing all hydraulic control surfaces, forcing the pilots to guide the plane to an airport using only engine thrust to steer the plane.