› added 4 years ago

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TIL, the US Department of Transportation was created in 1966 after congressional hearings prompted by the book "Unsafe at Any Speed" by Ralph Nader.

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8aNJ4 TIL there was a natural nuclear reactor in present-day Gabon that produced about 100kw of energy 2 billion years ago, running for thousands of years. This is the only known example of naturally occurring nuclear fission.
nWv5b TIL ponderosa pine trees bark smells like butterscotch.
BrRjW TIL Female Komodo dragons can impregnate themselves without a male through a process called "parthenogenesis." They can force the duplication of sex chromosomes and give birth to male Komodo dragons; keeping the species alive.
LjdQ TIL that there is an informal “Small Penis” rule, which authors use to protect themselves against libel lawsuits, by saying that a character they based off of someone else has a small penis, which stops most people from wanting to associate themselves with that character by suing the author.
NvRQ TIL that a squid’s digestive system passes through its brain and if it swallows something too big it can suffer from dain bramage