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TIL of Suero de Quiñones, a knight who spent a month camped next to a bridge with 10 of his friends to challenge every knight who crossed to a joust for no reason except to meet a goal of breaking "300 lances".

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Zpaa4 TIL: About a company that is genetically engineering poplar trees (already fast-growing, asexually spreading trees) to reduce their energy needs by adding metabolic genes from pumpkins and algae. The engineered trees grow 1.5x than controls. They've planted 600 trees in Oregon and plan to do more.
pYRnG TIL In 2001, an Australian hacker using a laptop and a radio transmitter took control of a local sewage system in Queensland and sent municipal sewage into parks, rivers and public lands. He did this out of revenge against the department that had opposed his hiring request.
DQBge TIL Hemispherectomyis (the removal/disconnecting of a hemisphere of the brain) has been an effective way to treat drug resistant epilepsy. Some patients are expected to lose advanced language abilities but others have gone on to be communication specialists.
awBKN TIL that during WW2 there was a saying that "It's more likely for a snake to smoke a pipe, than for Brazil to go the front and fight", so when Brazil joined the war, their troops became known as "Cobras Fumantes", or "the Smoking Snakes".
lo6Nr TIL that rh-null, the rarest blood type of the world, has been called the "Golden Blood". This blood type is so rare that only 43 people in the world have it, and there are only 9 active donor.