› added 5 years ago

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TIL: Pumpernickel (as in the bread) loosely translates to the Farting Devil in German.

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9YDaB TIL that the Arctic Circle is currently drifting northwards at a speed of about 15 m (49 ft) per year.
7r7Zx TIL: Microorganisms constitute more than 90% of the biomass in the sea. It is estimated that viruses kill approximately 20% of this biomass each day, and that there are 15 times as many viruses in the oceans as there are bacteria and archaea
oRy18 TIL that all of the original "Mercury Seven" astronauts were the eldest or only sons of their family. All were raised in small towns & all were married w/ children. All were (white) protestants, and four were their fathers' namesakes. All had attended post-secondary institutions in the 1940s.
Jabj TIL the FBI was right to watch Earnest Hemingway. He was a failed KGB spy.
M7PEA TIL that many printers secretly add microscopic yellow tracking dots to every printed page, encoding the date, time, and printer's serial number to trace documents back to their source.