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TIL that about 50,000 British criminals were "transported" to the American colonies for either 7 or 14 years as punishment in leiu of the death sentence. It ended with the American Revolution. UK jails then became overcrowded until they created the new colony of Australia and the practice restarted

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wnxJ TIL that despite its small size (41,543 sq. km, 134th in the world) and high population density (406 per sq. km, 24th in the world), the Netherlands is the number two exporter of food and agricultural products in the entire world, after only the United States.
wLR9J TIL that the white rind of a watermelon, between the pink flesh and green skin, is loaded with nutrients and just as healthy as the commonly eaten pink flesh.
j6rlv TIL of the Transfermium Wars, a controversy between US and Soviet scientists about the names of super-heavy elements. The final outcome was to name element 104 as "rutherfordium", element 105 as "dubnium" and element 106 as "seaborgium", which more closely matched the US than the Soviet proposals.
lWO1 TIL that Mark Twain blew the bulk of his book profits and his wife’s inheritance investing in the failed Paige typesetting machine, the inflation-adjusted equivalent of $8million USD, which lead him to file bankruptcy in 1894.
M7k10 TIL about Robert Hanssen, a former FBI agent regarded as the most damaging spy in U.S history. He made an average of $67,000 a year selling thousands of top secret documents to Russian intelligence for 22 years. The ex-KGB agent the FBI hired to catch him was paid $7 million.