› added 12 years ago

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TIL the first extermination camp was created by the Germans to kill Africans in 1904. Had nothing to do with Jews or Nazis.

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OGBOg TIL When a man in New York needed a heart transplant from a donor in Oklahoma, the hospital reached out to the US Air Force to help with transportation. The donor heart was transported across the country in two hours on an F-111 fighter jet. The operation was a complete success.
kOQaB TIL that in 1901 Dorland’s Medical Dictionary defined heterosexuality as an “abnormal or perverted appetite toward the opposite sex.” More than two decades later, in 1923, Merriam Webster’s dictionary similarly defined it as “morbid sexual passion for one of the opposite sex.”
nWxVd TIL during the siege of Suiyan in the An Lushan Rebellion of Tang China, due to food shortage and prolonged famine, in the beginning, the horses were eaten. When there were no more horses, they turned to the women, the old, and the weak. 30,000 people in total were eaten. Only 400 people were left.
v18O7 TIL about Kukulcania arizonica, aka the “Arizona black hole spider.” They ensnare insects by creating a velcro-like netting, inside a crevice, often on the wall of a building.
Br55W TIL when Sophie Rutschmann of the University of Strasbourg discovered a mutated gene that causes an adult fruit fly to die within two days after it is infected with certain bacteria, she named the gene "Kenny" in honor of the South Park character, who dies in almost every early episode.