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TIL lighter skin and hair pigments in early Eurasian humans may have been due to interbreeding with neanderthals

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R74N9 TIL about Maroons, enslaved Africans who quickly escaped in the countries they were brought to and often joined indigenous populations to form warrior tribes with their own complex language, war and living cultures. Many Maroon warfare tactics have been co-opted into global army training today.
LQWLZ TIL that “The Chipmunk Song (Christmas Don’t Be Late)” by Alvin & the Chipmunks was the only Christmas song to ever top the Billboard Hot 100 until Mariah Carey’s “All I Want For Christmas Is You” did so 61 years later.
k5oE TIL that cockroaches experience performance anxiety. A study found that cockroaches running through a hard maze will have more difficulties if other roaches are watching them.
9l0M TIL that, after Harry Houdini piloted the first airplane over the skies of Australia, he proclaimed that the world may forget his performances as an escape artist, but they would never forget he was the first person to fly a plane in Australia.
kO6v1 TIL about vanity sizing, which is the practice of assigning smaller sizes to clothing to flatter customers and encourage sales. For example, a Sears dress with a 32 inch (81 cm) bust was labeled a size 14 in the 1930s, a size 8 in the 1960s, and a size 0 in the 2010s.