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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.

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mxJKp TIL that a man named Eliot Curtis volunteered to repair an Analog Modular Instrument at Cal State University. Unknowingly though, while cleaning it he touched some residue that happened to be LSD and then he tripped for nine hours.
rNYZw TIL of Solomon Lefschetz, a mathematician who lost both of his hands in an industrial accident. He would go on to revolutionize algebraic topology and algebraic geometry.
BOGr TIL you can put crayons in a hot glue gun
wLbl8 TIL of Ignác Trebitsch, an Orthodox Jew con artist who spent time as a Protestant missionary, Anglican priest, British MP, German double-agent, Nazi collaborator, and Buddhist abbot.
99J7 TIL that during the Civil Rights Movement, the Soviet Union purposely inflamed racial tensions by mailing forged threats from the KKK to black neighborhoods