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TIL When bitten by caterpillars, plants send Chemical SOS signals to parasitic wasps that attack the caterpillars.

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J1vMB TIL José Saramago, one of Portugal's best-known writers, was a mechanical locksmith who hadn't even been to high school.
Lamp TIL Beethoven was once challenged to an improvisation contest by a famous pianist named Daniel Steibelt, Beethoven took the piece Steibelt’s music was written on, turned it upside down, played it, then improvised on that and mocked Daniel through his own music. Daniel left halfway through.
OoAoX TIL The name "Sri Lanka" does not come from the fact that it is by far the biggest island off India's coast (Lanka just means "island"). The honorific "Sri" came with the independence movement in British Ceylon. So the name doesn't mean "Lord Island" or "Great Island" but rather "Sovreign Island".
R714j TIL: Marge Simpson's hairstyle was originally designed to hide rabbit ears for an eventual reveal that she was secretly a rabbit from Matt Groening's comic strip "Life in Hell."
lZNr TIL: Due to the detonation of atomic bombs, everything on Earth was marked by a unique carbon signature. It can measure the date of anything from wine to human tissue.