› added 6 years ago

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TIL that sunflowers can clean up radioactive waste. Certain radioactive isotopes are similar to the nutrients sunflowers normally need, so as they grow, they take up radiation out of the soil.

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ExyP TIL: Bacteria are present in clouds and help make snow/rain/clouds better than dust
7r7GM TIL about Janet Parker, the last person on record to die of smallpox. In 1978, Parker worked above a U.K. research laboratory conducting experiments with the pathogen. Today smallpox is officially held at only two places in the world, the CDC in the U.S. and the Vector Institute in Russia.
5YpbD TIL that use of the word "road" for a fixed land route started at the end of the 16th century, with Shakespeare the first known user. Because of that, there are no roads in the "City of London" (London's medieval core): all the ways there had been named before the word came into the English language
QJeyL TIL an early script of the first James Bond film was rejected because the writers had turned Dr. No into a monkey.
4k9ZJ TIL the fig is actually an inverted flower that needs a specific kind of wasp to pollinate.