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TIL That a type of freshwater animal (a hydra) is immortal, as when it is injured it regenerates the damaged tissue

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1Vp8 TIL In the late Devonian period (during the evolution of terrestrial plants), there was a ‘wood crisis’. Trees became abundant, took CO2 out of the air, and caused an ice age, simply because the fungi that eventually would decompose dead wood & return the CO2 to the air hadn’t evolved yet.
GYmG5 TIL, on the day of bombing on Hiroshima, within the first three seconds 1000s of people were incinerated as the temperature at the burst-point reached 60 million degrees centigrade- 10000 times hotter than the Sun's surface.
b6Rp7 TIL when Chuck Peddle & Bill Mensch introduced the 6502 microprocessor at a trade show in 1975, it was faster & cheaper than its competitors ($25 each instead of nearly $200). It almost single-handedly forced the price of processors to drop, helping to launch the personal computer revolution.
d8Mdj TIL when Microsoft started manufacturing the Xbox 360, 68% of them were defective right out of the line. The main processor of the console had an 84% defect rate out of the line.
nvxo TIL the US and Australia are geographically almost the same size