› added 13 years ago

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TIL that Pinocchio actually kills the cricket, imprisons his maker for 3 years, bites off a cats hand, kills a snake by making it explode from laughing too hard, almost gets eaten by an ogre, and turns into a donkey

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0dvQp TIL In the late 1800s, a surgeon from Naples named Efisio Marini, developed a preservation process of the dead that gave a permanent state of natural freshness. He made gifts of preserved body parts to Napoleon III, and even gave a medallion to General Garibaldi made of his own blood.
ZpL6Q TIL about the 1886 Wallingford Shoe Box Murder Mystery, where the torso of an unidentified man was found in a large wooden box in rural Connecticut. Although the story made news across the U.S., with many theories and tips, neither the victim nor murderer have ever been identified.
X0o5r TIL that in 2022 scientists researching life’s origins observed that rocks known as basaltic glasses (usually found where lava is quenched or where meteorite impacts cool) were able to spontaneously link individual RNA letters - nucleoside triphosphates, into RNA strands up to 300 letters long.
e0GKk TIL of the 67 people who have served as President of Bolivia, 13 (19%) died by tragic means. 5 died in office, 3 by assassination and 2 of the 5 who died were suspected assassinations. A further 8 former presidents were assassinated in various ways after leaving office.
d8bjK TIL There is an enzyme called telomerase which reverses the aging process by replacing the junk DNA, which normally degrades over time, that protects coding DNA, and scientists think it is the key to immortality. Species like jellyfish and lobsters are biologically immortal because of this.