› added 5 years ago

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TIL about the cookiecutter shark. The name refers to its feeding habit of gouging round plugs, as if cut with a cookie cutter, out of larger animals. Marks made by cookiecutter sharks have been found on a wide variety of marine life, as well as on submarines, undersea cables, and even human bodies!

X0nYr TIL In 1942, the Japanese invaded the Aleutian island of Attu, capturing 42 Unangan (Aleut) residents and deporting them to a prison camp on Hokkaido. In 1943 the American forces retook the island in intense combat. Only 26 of the Unangan captives survived and none ever returned to Attu.
rROjw TIL there are 43 presidential busts that are twenty feet tall, in a field near Jamestown VA, rescued from a presidential museum that went bust.
OLle TIL there is a genetic disorder that causes its sufferers to have, among other things, a friendly disposition, an elf-like appearance, and perfect pitch.
RK96 TIL Before CGI, Movie makers would create content by painting it on glass and integrating that with the live action shot. The endless warehouse in “Indiana Jones”, the tractor beam in the first “Star Wars”, and the Emerald City in “The Wizard of Oz” were all done using this technique.
MeNVV TIL that in the aftermath of the Great Japan Earthquake of 1923, when fire broke out around the city of Tokyo, 44,000 people went to the river to escape the flames, only to be closed in by the flames on all sides. Almost all were then, in a single moment, incinerated by a 300ft tall fire tornado