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TIL - Since 2014, the Saudi company Fondomonte has been pumping unlimited amounts of groundwater in the desert west of Phoenix to harvest thousands of acres of alfalfa crops. The alfalfa is then shipped back to Saudi Arabia to feed their cattle.

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akvN TIL Bill Murray was only paid $9000 to star in Rushmore. He also gave Wes Anderson a check $25,000 to film the final montage after Disney refused to finance it. Anderson never cashed the check.
0wnGy TIL Scrooge's famous cry for the poor to die and thereby 'decrease the surplus population' was most likely a reference to Thomas Malthus who had written a generation before about the economic dangers of a lack of war, plague and famine.
OoOJ6 Today I Learned that the seed, inner bark, pollen, and needles of some pine trees are edible.
4XebX TIL: Stalin was actually warned about the Nazi invasion, 'Barbarossa', weeks before it actually happened. Refusing to believe the Nazis had broken the Molotov–Ribbentrop Pact of 1939, dismissing the reports of war as British provocations. More than 800,000 Soviets were killed, 6 million captured.
Em5w TIL of the Queen’s Champion. During the coronation banquet, the Champion would ride into Westminster Hall in full armor and await any challenger to the throne. The current Queen’s Champion is a chartered accountant.