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TIL: A rattlesnake's rattle doesn’t work like a maraca, with little bits shaking inside. The rattle is actually a bunch of loosely interlocking segments made out of keratin.

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d8ywB TIL Thomas Jefferson for many years "kept, as his concubine, one of his own slaves” named Sally Hemings.
9YMnD TIL in 1953, a paper boy acquired a hollowed-out nickel containing a ciphered message while collecting for his deliveries. He told the daughter of an NYPD officer and the news got to the FBI, eventually leading to the arrest and conviction of KGB agent Vilyam Fisher four years later.
neQ1Y TIL: During the interwar period, the United States operated a fleet of flying aircraft carriers. Each of these airships could carry six aircraft. After crashes destroyed all of them but the Zeppelin built USS Los Angeles, the program was cancelled.
JY5mk TIL in the days following the assassination of Rev. Martin Luther King Jr., Ronald Reagan called the killing "a great tragedy that began when we began compromising with law and order and people started choosing which laws they'd break."
D1dQY TIL container ships lose 2,000 to 10,000 containers at sea each year.