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TIL that West Africans inherited 8% of their DNA from a “ghost” species, which helps protect them from cancer

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NXv6J TIL that no US company can ever perfectly recreate the taste of Coca Cola as one of the ingredients in it is extract from the Coca leaf. Since cocaine is made from the plant only one company in the US can import it - Stepan’s Company. Their only customer is Coca Cola.
6QYl TIL that late at night, when astronomer Harlow Shapley discovered our sun was not near the center of the Milky Way, he found the only other person in the building, a cleaning lady, and explained his discovery, and said that they were the only two people on Earth that understood it.
5Vnar TIL that 'Penny dreadful', which started in Britain in the 1830's, were the first 'Pop Culture' product. The serial stories, mass produced for new, young readers, sold up to a million copies per week. Each chapter had 8-16 pages and cost a penny. Sensational topics included crime, the supernatural.
grEJX TIL there is a sport called Rollball a mixture of rollerblading/basketball/handball...
naDb TIL… In 1977, a 23-year old graduate student stumbled upon a compound with effects similar to heroin. He made a bunch and shared it with his friends to get high, except the batch he made was contaminated with a toxic byproduct that left them all with debilitating Parkinson’s Disease within a week.