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TIL the Ancient Silk Road city of Merv, Turkmenistan had once held the title of the world's largest city during the 12th-13th century with a population of more than 500,000 and in 1221 was horrifically decimated in its entirety by the Mongols in one of the worst genocides in human history

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OGo5X TIL there is a species of bird that has only been found once. A Red Sea Cliff Swallow was found in Sudan in 1984, and a second bird of this species has never been found. There is not enough conclusive evidence to say it matches any other species of swallow, so it is still listed as its own species.
Wxd8 TIL that it’s called an Atomic Typo if your typo creates a different correctly-spelled word, immune to spellcheck.
dv09 TIL scorpions are incredibly resilient. Scientists have frozen scorpions overnight, left them in the sun the following day, and when thawed, the arthropod walked away unscathed.
5VO5p TIL the historian meridian marker In Greenwich is off by about 100 meters because they looked "straight up" at stars, but to find "straight up" you use a weight to find "straight down", and the uneven mass of the Earth means that it doesn't point to the exact center of the Earth
M7kNW Today I learned about the Heslington Brain, the oldest found preserved brain as it is over 2,600 years old