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TIL US Senator William Proxmire of Wisconsin wanted the US to ratify the UN Genocide Convention. He gave a speech on the need to ratify it each day the Senate was in session from 1967-1986 (a total of 3,211 times) until the US Senate finally ratified it on Feb. 11th, 1986 in an 83-11 vote.

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1Vp8 TIL In the late Devonian period (during the evolution of terrestrial plants), there was a ‘wood crisis’. Trees became abundant, took CO2 out of the air, and caused an ice age, simply because the fungi that eventually would decompose dead wood & return the CO2 to the air hadn’t evolved yet.
KOmJw TIL that the comedy Taking Care of Business (aka: Filofax) in 1990 that starred James Belushi and Charles Grodin was actually the first screenplay written by J. J. Abrams who later went on to make the Star Trek and Star Wars films
w4ME TIL that the Wadi-Al-Hitan site in Egypt contains hundreds of fossilized whales
p8M0G TIL: Gorilla-Sized Lemurs were Living in Madagascar as Recently as 380 BCE
9YEdM TIL that the same studio that produced Akira, TMS Entertainment, also made Animaniacs and Tiny Toons