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TIL Viruses kill about 25-30% of the living material in the oceans every day. When they infect and kill organisms, nutrients such as carbon and phosphorous are released into the ocean. This keeps microbes and phytoplankton thriving. If you take the viruses out of seawater, photosynthesis stops

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lgm7 TIL in 1925, Henry Ford told the NYT that ethyl alcohol is “the fuel of the future”. There is fuel in every bit of vegetable matter that can be fermented. There’s enough alcohol in one year’s yield of an acre of potatoes to drive the machinery necessary to cultivate the fields for a hundred years.“
l6kB TIL The president and CEO of Gearbox Software Bought Penn Jillette’s Ponytail for $25,000
8eAgL TIL that scientists thought Rhizocophala, a group of parasitic barnacles, were hermaphroditic, as many other barnacles. But then they discovered the "testes" were actually males living inside the females.
nednr TIL Dodos were big, but not the fat birds we picture; the theory is that paintings and illustrations depicting them as such are based on overfed, captive specimens, or simply due to artistic license
5YA0D TIL Late 80s, during visiting a zoo, Mike Tyson offered the zookeeper $10,000 to open a gorilla cage so he can go in there and punch the Gorilla who he noticed was bullying all of the other primates.