› added 1 year ago

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TIL that windmills used to be used to mill grain. From the US and only think of wind turbines and energy.

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wKd1 TIL there is an 80 Million year old species made up entirely of females. “Bdelloid rotifers are to microscopic life as Rogue is to the X-Men.” They steal DNA from other organisms, mutating their own genes to absorb new traits. They can also survive 9 yrs of Desiccation.
e0XQD TIL In 1966 the Spanish army built an enormous cemetery in Burgos for the final scene of The Good, The Bad and The Ugly. The graveyard now hosts 4,500 graves bearing the names of the living people who each donated €15 towards the 2018 restoration of the cemetery to its original movie set condition.
wolE1 TIL In 2017, a Scottish widower launched 2000 messages in bottles in an attempt to find love. He got 50 potential dates, and multiple angry responses from locals and environmental agencies.
b6vlE TIL about Project Plowshare, a project by the US government to allow nuclear explosives for commercial use, such as oil extraction. It was ended over concerns about radiation in the air and fuel extracted being to radioactive to use.
9wg9D TIL that despite there having been only 21 popes named John, the most recent one was numbered XXIII due to clerical errors introduced in the Middle Ages that resulted in Antipope John XVI being counted for centuries and John XX being skipped entirely.