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TIL while a grad student, botanist Arthur Galston discovered the use of an acid to encourage the flowering of soybeans, noting that high levels had a defoliant effect. The military later developed this acid into agent orange. Galston became a bioethicist, and his objections led Nixon to ban it.

EnRX TIL that Thich Quang Duc, a monk who set himself on fire to protest the persecution of Buddhists by the Catholic church in Saigon, remained motionless and never made a sound as he was burning alive. His heart remained intact afterwards. The photo of him burning alive won the Pulitzer prize.
J1yPv TIL Thanks to strict protection and management from Indian and Nepalese wildlife authorities, the greater one-horned rhino population now numbers 4,014 individuals. Once perilously close to extinction, numbering fewer than 100 individuals, the greater one-horned rhino was brought back from the brink
5YlnD TIL: In 1209, a student of Oxford University apparently killed a woman and fled. In retaliation, the townspeople hanged three students. The school suspended operations and the faculty all feared the mob. Many of the facility then moved to Cambridge and founded a new university there.
Z8aEp TIL crows hold ‘funerals’ and will avoid an area or thing that is deemed dangerous to their own species. In other words, they know what death is and know to fear it.
DbDY TIL that soon after Eli Whitney invented the cotton gin, David Wesson perfected a method for creating an edible cooking oil from the abundance of seeds.