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TIL there's an engineer, in the woods near Portland Oregon, who lives in an old Boeing 727 since 1999

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6dpm TIL that some ancient sling bullets excavated from the city of Athens, Greece were inscribed with the word “ΔΕΞΑΙ” (dexai), which translates to “catch!”
YbDB TIL of Mordechai Vanunu, who exposed Israel’s nuclear program in 1986. The Israeli gov’t then kidnapped him in Rome, held a secret trial, and jailed him for 18 years (11 in solitary). He’s famous as a whistleblower, but Israel calls him a traitor.
ADZd7 When a mosquito bites, it pierces your skin and draws blood with the tip of its straw-like mouth, or proboscis. In the process, the mosquito injects some of its own saliva, which contains an anticoagulant that prevents your blood from clotting around the proboscis and trapping the insect. (Only female mosquitoes, which need the nutrients from the blood to produce eggs, bite.)
Zpeyp TIL of ray cat, a proposed kind of cat that would be genetically engineered to glow in the presence of nuclear radiation to act as a long-term nuclear warning. This is done by inventing traditions of folklore which spread the idea that people should flee when a cat changes color
ANYWa TIL Senator Strom Thurmond had a child out of wedlock named Essie Washington-Williams who was black. She revealed herself as his daughter after his death at the age of 100. She tried to join the 'Daughters of the Confederacy', as she was eligible through her father's ancestry, but she was rejected.