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TIL of Ken Alibek, last USSR 1st Deputy Director of Biopreparat. Before defecting to the US in 1992 he destroyed vast bioweapon (BW) stockpiles and production facilities but could not stop all future BW work in Russia. His 1999 book Biohazard details the USSR’s secret, treaty-violating BW program.

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6P7Y TIL The Korean alphabet can be learned in about 15 minutes and is brilliantly simple.
0w5K5 TIL There are twice as many bathrooms as necessary as the Pentagon because planners had to design the it for black and white employees, including “white” and “colored” cafeterias. However, Pres. Roosevelt made Jim Crow laws illegal on Federal property prior to its opening and was never enforced.
Oo6x1 TIL of André Tchaikowsky, a Polish pianist who donated his skull to the Royal Shakespeare Company after his death, as he wanted it to be used for Yorick in productions of Hamlet. It took 26 years for his wishes to be realized as no one wanted to use it. In 2008, David Tennant finally used it.
OX57 TIL that Japanese bathrooms have a button that plays the flushing sound to mask the sound of your own business.
P1WGe TIL of the estimated 20 million tons of gold in the oceans, worth $700 Trillion. All the gold humans ever mined is 208,874 tons.