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TIL about a species of extremophile bacteria that was only ever found in two spacecraft clean rooms, located 4000 km apart. In one of them a Mars lander "Phoenix" was assembled, and the species was given a name after the lander: Tersicoccus phoenicis.

Read more jpl.nasa.gov

via reddit.com

X0KpE TIL that in 1980 a Texaco oil rig on Louisiana’s Lake Peigneur drilled into a salt mine, which created a giant whirlpool and a 164-ft waterfall that drained the lake, reversed the flow of a canal that lead to the ocean, but everyone in the mine was able to escape.
P1gQn TIL just 2 months after 9/11 an Airbus crashed into a Queens neighborhood, killing all 260 people on board and 5 people on the ground. Despite fears of another terror attack the cause was determined to be pilot error leading to mechanical failure.
VZxD TIL that there is an area in the mid-Pacific ocean called White Shark Cafe where sharks travel to and loiter for no identified reason despite there being little food there and it being a sharks’ equivalent of a desert.
Wk4no TIL that during WW2 in US occupied Aachen, an OSS agent assessed that the US installed mayor was planning to form a dictatorship. The agent leaked the information to the press and the mayor, whose identity was secret, was killed by an SS commando team which parachuted from a captured American B-17.
jNm8X TIL of the Hatfield-McCoy family feud, one of the most famous in America. Both families were Confederates, but one of the McCoys fought for the Union. While returning home from the war, he was murdered by a Confederate militia with the prime suspect being a Hatfield.