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TIL: A british university actually funded a study that tested the theory that given a typewriter and enough time, a group of monkeys would recreate Shakespeare. The monkeys repeatedly deficated/urinated on the typewriter and were unsuccesful in typing more than one letter.

Read more theguardian.com

via reddit.com

P1awn TIL that certain types of cheeses are made using tiny arachnids called "cheese mites" which ingest the unfinished dairy product and excrete the material that completes the cheese.
jNEga TIL the classic 1970 war movie Kelly's Heroes was based on an actual robbery of the Nazi gold reserves by a syndicate of US and German servicemen in 1945. It was covered up by the US and Germany and only two gold bars found in 1996 have been recovered worth about $1m at today's prices.
yVdYv TIL Leonardo Da Vinci wrote backwards in 'mirror writing', writing right to left with all letters reversed. One theory on why he did this was because he was left-handed and didn't want to smudge the ink.
jwGN TIL during the Nanking Massacre, it is estimated Japanese soldiers raped 20,000 women. They were often killed after being raped, often through explicit mutilation or by stabbing a bayonet, long stick of bamboo, or other objects into the vagina. Young children were cut open to allow them to be raped.
e0A7n TIL Prairie dogs have different calls to communicate about humans that they've seen. "They're able to describe the colour of clothes the humans are wearing, they're able to describe the size and shape of humans, even, amazingly, whether a human once appeared with a gun,"