› added 6 years ago

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TIL that the last thylacine died in 1936, and, due to the fact that the zoo expected to find a replacement, they did not bother to keep records of the animal. In fact, its gender was only determined in 2011 by a team of researchers looking frame-by-frame at a video of it.

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8epNK TIL The first person clinically diagnosed with Autism is still alive. Donald Grey Triplett who is 89 years old.
JoAV TIL Norwegian TV producers teamed up with a man dying of cancer to find out if mediums can talk to the dead. He left a secret note with a message only he knows. Anyone can guess what it says, and they reveal it on the 5th of October
8eADZ TIL Juggling is ancient with the earliest Egyptian depiction being in a 11th Dynasty (2150-1991 BCE) tomb painting. Juggling was also well established in China where in 603 BCE Xiong Yiliao made a Song army retreat through an impressive display of juggling 9 balls.
R7Vo6 TIL that a few weeks before the 1986 Chernobyl disaster, US scientists performed a safety test on the EBR-II reactor by disabling cooling pumps and automatic protection systems at full thermal power. The core passively cooled itself as designed without human intervention or damage.
x6JY5 TIL that nearly 100 years ago researchers at Princeton University successfully turned a living cat into a functioning telephone. Using a series of electrodes, they captured the electrical signals from the cat's auditory nerves and converted them into sound waves.