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TIL in 1958, Frank Herbert was talking with his friend from the Quileute tribe, whose lands were being destroyed due to excessive logging. The man said white people were "gonna turn this whole planet into a wasteland, just like North Africa." This inspired Herbert to write Dune.

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wLeL7 TIL That the theory of plate tectonics was not widely accepted by the geoscientific community until the 50s or 60s.
6ERkm TIL of the Battle of Karánsebes, where drunk Calvary yelling "Turk!" as a joke. The infantry believed them and opened fire, causing the officers to shout "Stop!" The artillery thought it was "Allah" and opened fire. Two days later the Ottoman army arrived, discovering the dead and wounded.
6E1mX TIL a Russian Blue tomcat named "Xiaopi" needed a glucose drip after mating with five females during one night in a Chinese pet hotel. The cat's owner, Mr. Zhao, said he specifically told the hotel that Xiaopi wasn't neutered, but they let him roam freely anyway.
xWlo TIL the population of Kabul, Afghanistan has grown from 500,000 in 2001 to about 4 million today after the elimination of the Taliban regime.
b9roN TIL 17-yr-old Wolf Cukier found a new planet 3 days into a summer NASA internship. From space telescope data, he detected something blocking starlight, which was the shadow from a planet about 6.9 times larger than Earth. He doesn't get to name the planet, but he got a discount on a NASA jacket.