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TIL that Jack, a baboon operated the railway signals for a South African railway operator under supervision of his paraplegic owner. He was paid with half-bottle of beer each week and never made a mistake in nine years of employment.

KOp79 TIL St. Marina the Monk was a crossdressing Catholic saint who joined her widowed father in the monastery. "Brother Marinos" was accused of impregnating a girl, and rather than reveal her sex to save face, humbly let herself be cast out and supported the child like a father.
WeNB TIL since many female insects mate just once in their lives, insect populations can be controlled by releasing swarms of sterile males into the wild; the females mate with them, never have babies, and die. The method has eradicated populations of dangerous insects in several regions.
neYko TIL the USSR considered Darwinian evolution a lie created by "bourgeois capitalism", and instead opted for Lamarckian evolution for political reasons. The failure of Soviet biologists to acknowledge natural selection resulted in a series of crop failures and food shortages.
epEBL TIL that Switzerland suffered casualties in WW2, despite being neutral. The US air force accidentally bombed a number of Swiss towns, thinking they were in Germany, and several aerial incidents took place against both Allied and Axis planes due to violating Swiss airspace.
b9W7N TIL abolitionist Fredrick Douglass was the most photographed American of the 19th century and never smiled in a single photo, to counter the notion of a happy slave.