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TIL that in 1758, Carl Linnaeus, in his book Systema Naturæ, divided humans into five "subspecies:" the white, sanguine, and powerful Europeans; the yellow, melancholy, and severe Asians; the red, choleric, and stubborn Americans; the black, stony, and lax Africans; and the "wild, monstrous" others.

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kJWQE TiL that while primary endosymbiosis, which originated the plastids and the mitochondria, happened only once, secondary endosymbiosis happened several types, giving rise to many different, unrelated groups of algae that got their plastids by engulfing other eukaryotes that had engulfed bacteria!
x65J7 TIL that Canada produced over 800,000 military trucks during WW2, more than Germany, Italy & Japan combined. In 1945 the Canadian Army had 1 vehicle for every 3 soldiers (the US Army had 1 for 7), making it the most mobile army on earth.
kODLd TIL the last French soldier to die in WW1 was killed 15 minutes before the ceasefire. He was delivering a message to his unit that soup would be served for lunch.
8PdZ TIL That the first example of wearable computing was a ring with a usable Abacus in 16th century China
9YGr7 TIL in 1959, a geologist built a rock cairn 1.2 m away from a glacier and left a note, asking whoever found it to measure the distance to the glacier. When it was found in 2013, the distance had grown up to 101.5 m. For a scientist in the 1950s to predict a glacier retreating was highly unexpected.