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TIL The Hippopotamus produces its own sunscreen through a viscous secretion across the skin, originating from subdermal glands. This secretion starts clear, within minutes polymerizing to a red, then brown color - it also has antimicrobial properties.

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a8xBL TIL that Thomas Dewey was so widely expected to win the 1948 Election against President Harry Truman that James Maloney, the Head of Secret Service, dispatched most of Truman's Secret Service detail to New York to prepare to guard Dewey. A few weeks after Truman won re-election, he dismissed Maloney
QNEvE TIL The Page Act of 1875 barred entry of Asian immigrants suspected of entering the US involuntarily or for sex work. In practice, the law targeted Chinese women by appealing to a common stereotype that they were prostitutes and dangerous to the institution of marriage.
NXV6P TIL a sultan of Morocco, Isma‘il ibn Sharif, owned a private army called "The Black Guard" comprised of West African and Haratin slave-soldiers. Considered more loyal than the locals because of their lack of tribal affiliation, Isma‘il's black soldiers formed the bulk of his army, numbering at 150k.
x6M9o TIL that it takes 73 C-17 flights to move a Patriot Air defense Battalion.
XZD8 TIL that according to a Pew Research study performed in 2010 atheists knew more in general about different religions than religious people did, with Jews coming in close second and Mormons also close by in third