› added 4 years ago

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TIL of penis fencing, a mating behavior in hermaphroditic species of flatworm. Two flatworm “fight” and try to penetrate the other's epidermis and inject sperm into them (aka "traumatic insemination"). The loser becomes fertilized and is known as the "mother", while the victor becomes the "father"

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jNOxN TIL A stroke used to be called apoplexy which is Greek "struck down by violence." Hippocrates, the father of medicine, first recognized stroke over 2,400 years ago.
e0WnL TIL A fitness tracking app gave away the locations of secret US army bases. The company released 3 trillion GPS data points to help people find popular running routes in major cities, however it was detailed enough to give away sensitive information of users on active military service.
VM87p TIL Viking women’s faces were more masculine than today’s women, while Viking men's faces looked more feminine than today's men, with a less prominent jaw and brow ridges. The ambiguous facial features mean that it is difficult to decide upon a Viking skeleton’s sex based on the skull alone
OGxdg TIL There were nazi prisoner camps in rural Virginia towards the end of WW2. They were there to, among other things, to pick apples while American Servicemen were fighting in Europe.
JY6gl TIL that, because zeppelins often could not see the ground during flight due to cloud cover, they would lower a man in a small chamber called a sub-cloud car by a wire as much as a thousand or so feet to observe the ground and direct the pilots via telephone.