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TIL the Rocky Mountains locust has the Guinness world record for the largest animal gathering in the world and is mysteriously extinct one century ago.

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W7XQX TIL that Walmart's struggle in Germany was linked to excessive employee smiling, which unsettled shoppers unaccustomed to such behavior. This cultural mismatch, along with other company practices, led to Walmart's exit from Germany in the mid-2000s.
bBJ7 TIL in the US the death penalty is, on average, 10x more expensive to taxpayers than life imprisonment.
JYGAv TIL of Thales of Miletus, The first known individual to whom a mathematical discovery has been attributed. Thales used geometry to calculate the heights of pyramids and the distance of ships from the shore. He is also the first known individual to use deductive reasoning applied to geometry
JYnyv TIL that musical prodigy Alma Deutscher was the subject of her linguist father's language experiments. He never told her the sky was "blue" in an effort to understand why ancient cultures never used the term for the sky. Her perceptions and name for the sky, "white", were reported in his 2010 book.
Z8w7a TIL that George Harrison briefly quit the Beatles and John Lennon suggested replacing him with Eric Clapton, saying “he's just as good and not such a headache."