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TIL about 'star jelly' or 'star snot,' a gelatinous substance sometimes found on grass or even on branches of trees. According to folklore, it is deposited on the Earth during meteor showers. Nobody is quite sure what it actually is.

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Me7AA National Geographic Emerging Explorer Leslie Dewan is helping to revolutionize the nuclear power industry by designing a safer, more efficient alternative to today’s reactors.Conventional nuclear reactors only use about 3 to 4 percent of uranium’s accessible energy. The energy left behind is what makes conventional nuclear waste—radioactive for hundreds of thousands of years—so dangerous. Extracting more of the available energy reduces the radioactive lifetime of the waste. To this end, Dewan is helping to develop techniques that extract 96 percent of the available energy.
wL80P TIL about Oberammergau, a German village that vowed to put on a passion play every ten years if they were spared from bubonic plague. They were, and have put on this play since the 1600s, with the next being in 2020.
9waM TIL Sperm whale oil was still a key component in automatic transmission fluid until 1972!
aWno TIL a veterinary medicine given to sick cattle accidentally killed 97% of three species and 99.9% of one species of South Asian vultures. Banned in 2006 in many Asian countries but this year it has been approved for use in Spain and Italy despite warnings about the risk.
4XGoJ TIL early sections of San Francisco were built upon ships abandoned by prospectors during the California Gold Rush. Many were intentionally run aground to become bars and hotels. Now, hundreds of wooden ships lay beneath the city streets and a portion of their subway goes through the hull of one.