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TIL During the Chernobyl meltdown, 3 people gave their lives diving in a radioactive pool, to open a pipe and prevent an explosion 10 times bigger than the atomic bomb in Hiroshima.

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woZ7P TIL a Puget Sound orca called L25 is the oldest known living wild orca in the world. While her exact age is uncertain, she's estimated to be anywhere from her mid-80s to her mid-90s. In 1976 when the Center for Whale Research's census began, the original estimate for L25's birth year was 1928.
w8g1 TIL James Blunt “sold his sister” on EBay as a “damsel in distress” when she could not find transportation to a funeral. She ended up marrying the man that won the auction.
BrYeK TIL that in a "computational data-centric analysis" of the most significant figures in history "adjusted for recency bias", Ronald Reagan was ranked 32nd, above Paul the Apostle, Genghis Khan, Thomas Edison, Franklin D. Roosevelt, Freud, Mahatma Gandhi, Johann Sebastian Bach, Galileo, and Buddha
GYNXj TIL In Ancient Greece, prostitutes were classified into two classes; the Pornai and the Hetairai. The Pornai served many men at once, and frequently worked on the street. In contrast, Hetarai were educated, had few clients, and provided companionship and intellectual discussion as well as sex.
xKw TIL there is a species of crabs that can grow larger than humans