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TIL On average, captive animals (especially mammals) live longer than wild animals, and animals with shorter lifespans/faster growth rates benefit more from zoos than animals with higher longevities/slow growth rates.

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l7RbA TIL Victor Vescovo is the first person to complete the "Explorers' Extreme Trifecta" of land, sea & air by: summiting Mount Everest (the highest point on Earth), diving to the Challenger Deep in the Mariana Trench (the deepest point on Earth), & entering space (crossing the 100-km-high Kármán Line).
LkKXr TIL the first Indian medical book "Atharva Veda" includes a fairly detailed germ theory, as it describes a number of pathogens and possible cures for disease. The book was written in 200BC, but it's ideas can be dated back to 1000BC. Germ theory was not proven correct until the 19th Century AD.
vKrK TIL Researchers placed a human language-gene FoxP2 into mice – finding their vocalization to change, and their speech-related brain regions to increase plasticity and branching
eyGJ TIL that when Earth passed through the tail of Halley’s Comet during its 1910 approach, there was public fear that a gas discovered in the tail, cyanogen, would destroy all life on the planet, leading to people buying gas masks and “Anti-Comet Pills.”
KLg4 TIL In 1970, America’s semiconductor industry ground to a halt because manufacturers couldn’t buy blades for cutting the wafers apart. All the big companies bought their blades from a guy working out of his garage who suddenly got sick.