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TIL each year U of Chicago students embark on a scavenger hunt. The 1999 list included a French Canadian, Fisher Price Baby's First Flamethrower, 5 Mensa membership cards and a nuclear reactor. Justin Kasper and Fred Niell built a plutonium-producing reactor in a single day to get 2nd place

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mKGv TIL There is an electric eel in a tennessee aquarium and the aquarium is hooked up to a computer that sends out a tweet from the electric eels twitter account whenever it discharges a high enough amount of electricity.
M7M8B TIL in February 1864 over 100 union prisoners of escaped Libby Prison in Virginia. Making it one of the most successful prison breaks of the civil war.
wA0P TIL that the Coelacanth and the Lungfish are more closely related to Mammals than to other Ray-Finned fish
vPa7j TIL of Benjamin Lay who lived in Philadelphia in the 18th century. He was four feet tall, a hunchback, and lived in a cave. He created his own clothes to boycott the slave-labor industry and would not wear or eat anything made from the loss of animal life or by slave labor.
VMa7Z TIL that a boy in the UK was born with only 2% of his brain. His parents were told he would live in a vegetative state, if at all; they had even prepared his funeral before he was born. By age 3, the boy's brain had grown to 80% the normal size. Now 9, he can read and do math.