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TIL of “the Tree That Owns Itself.” In 1890, a landowner left an oak tree and the surrounding land to the tree itself. When the original tree was knocked down by a storm in 1940, the new tree was planted from an acorn and is now known as “The Son of the Tree That Owns Itself.”

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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.
P1p7Z TIL that, Nominated 49 times for the Nobel Prize without ever winning it, Lise Meitner, co-discoverer of nuclear fission, also discovered the Matilda effect.
ADxmg TIL the Wolf of Wall Street, with a fuck count of 857, is the 3rd highest ranked movie measured by how many times the word "fuck" was used. At 3.16fpm, it also has the 5th highest rank for fucks per minute.
M7ROW TIL the Persian King Agha Mohammad Khan commanded the killing of two attendants for their loudness. On a holy day, he delayed their execution for a day and had them go back to their work. The attendants assassinated the king while he was sleeping that night.
DQVLg TIL Only 47 people live on the Pitcairn Islands in the middle of the Pacific Ocean. Almost all of the residents are descendants of the mutineers of HMS Bounty, a British ship in 1790.