› added 3 years ago

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TIL about the Ghost Moth of New Zealand that spends 5-6 years as a grub, making a burrow in a tree in the shape of a '7', but only spends a couple of days as an actual moth, as it has no mouthparts. If it's lucky enough to find a mate, it lays 2000 eggs before starving to death.

GYG65 TIL there is an organization called Veterans Empowered to Protect African Wildlife (VETPAW) that enlists veterans to protect endangered species by hunting poachers in Africa
nZgb TIL that hydraulic fracturing (fracking), was often considered too expensive to realistically pursue until an engineer discovered more efficient methods in 1997. Although Nicholas Steinsberger saved his company and changed the industry, he did not receive so much as a bonus.
O86L TIL from a declassified US DOD document titled ‘Operation Northwoods’ that the DOD wanted to blow up a US Navy ship, down a civilian airliner, crash John Glenn’s spaceship, fake an attack on Guantanamo and stage communist terror campaigns to provide justification for a US military invasion of Cuba.
K566 TIL there’s a standard called “Beer Clean” for washing glasses that’s more strict than “Water Clean”
0deb5 TIL that one of the first devices made to estimate electric voltage, the "Frog Galvanoscope" of the late 1700s, was named after its crude method of attaching electrical wires directly to the exposed nerve of a recently skinned frog leg, which would jerk suddenly in response to electric current.