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TIL: When Catherine di Medici was queen of France, she kept a ‘Flying Squad’ of 80 women tasked with sleeping with powerful men to extract their secrets.

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aOgJ TIL there is an extinct genus of ape, Gigantopithecus blacki, which stood up to 9.8 feet tall, weighed as much as 1,190 pounds and have lived alongside modern humans for tens of thousands of years.
VMeVp TIL the silent P in the word "ptarmigan" has absolutely no reason to be there. The bird's name comes from the Gaelic "tàrmachan" ("croaker"), but in 1684 the Scottish naturalist Robert Sibbald decided to add a p in front to make the word look more Greek.
A10x TIL a woman adopted by a black family in the 1940s only discovered she was white after finding her adoption papers in 2013.
OoBZg TIL there is roughly as much vitamin C in one ounce of narwhal skin as there is in one ounce of oranges.
mKLv TIL whole milk is only 3.5% fat and is calorically very similar to the “healthier” option of 2% milk