› added 7 years ago

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TIL Bracken Cave (Texas) has the largest bat colony on Earth. The bats are a great benefit to cotton farmers in the region.

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5Vwrn TIL of Jan Palach, He was a student at Prague University in January 1969 when he self-immolated in protest of the Warsaw Pact invasion of Czechoslovakia. 26 other self-immolations were made and Jan became an icon of Czech freedom and eventually a national hero after the Velvet Revolution
0w4M5 TIL One year after graduating from West Point near the top of his class in 2008, Second Lt. Lawrence J Franks Jr got on a plane to Paris & spent the next 5 years in the French Foreign Legion under an assumed name. Afterward he turned himself in to the US Army & was sentenced to 4 years for desertion
7rLZP TIL Hagfish were being transported to South Korea where they are eaten as a delicacy, but instead covered the car and road in slime. Hagfish slime expands by 10,000 times in a fraction of a second. It is 100,000 times softer than Jell-O. Hagfish produce slime when attacked or stressed.
VMD5G TIL about Wendell Fertig, a US serviceman who rather than surrender with the bulk of US forces during the Japanese invasion of the Philippines, “self-promoted” himself to Brigadier General and organized pockets of Filipino fighters and other US serviceman into a highly effective Guerilla force
R5ZEj TIL children develop and share their own unique folklore (called 'childlore'), including rhymes and games, which often disappear by adolescence and go unnoticed by adults.