› added 2 years ago

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TIL that a 90s Canadian action series, "Tropical Heat", became a suprise hit in Serbia. The main character (Rob Stewart's "Nick Slaughter") became a hero and symbol of the 1996 opposition against Slobodan Milošević, and no one from the show was aware of the cult status it reached there until 2008.

Dkyp TIL Gray’s paradox (how can dolphins achieve their swim speed with their muscle mass) was solved by showing that their tails can change stiffness to keep high efficiency at different speeds.
gMJbW TIL the Methuselah Tree, named after the Biblical figure who was said to live 969 years, is a nearly 5,000-year-old bristlecone pine near Death Valley believed to be the second-oldest tree on earth.
oRnOR TIL in 1997, a civilian pilot witnessed and reported one of the most widely sighted UFO appearances, the Phoenix Lights. That pilot was actor Kurt Russell, who only learned of the significance of the lights years later when he saw it mentioned on a TV show his wife was watching.
ADoDw TIL of Karl P. Schmidt, a herpetologist who documented his own death after he was bitten by a juvenile boomslang snake. He made detailed notes on the symptoms he experienced, almost right up to the end. He died 24 hours after the bite, bleeding in his lungs, kidneys, heart, and brain.
69mol TIL about a short series of Garfield comic strips in Halloween 1989 that depict Garfield waking up in an abandoned house, alone and starving. Jim Davis wrote them “…to scare people. And what do people fear most? Why, being alone.”