› added 10 months ago

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TIL that about 80% of the animal and plant species in Madagascar are unique to the island and found nowhere else on Earth.

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via reddit.com

7rKMP TIL that Goya's "Saturn Devouring His Son" is actually an untitled painting with a subject only presumed to be the Greek Titan. The cannibalized figure actually has round hips like a woman, and is not an infant like in the myth.
6EX7Z TIL the US navy's new class of aircraft carrier USS Gerald R.Ford can accomplish 25% more aircraft launches per day than the Nimitz class and requires 25% fewer crew members. The Navy estimates it will save $4 billion in operating costs over a 50-year lifespan.
gr1KX TIL in 1959, John Howard Griffin passed himself as a Black man and travelled around the Deep South to witness segregation and Jim Crow, afterward writing about his experience in "Black Like Me"
4X65J TIL of Rudloe Manor, the UK's own Area 51. For years, the RAF’s secret service worked in underground tunnels and chambers beneath the manor on UFO investigations. It's existence was consistently denied by the MOD, but in 2007, during a release of declassified files, it was finally confirmed.
WkMNA TIL of Norman Borlaug, a scientist who developed and promoted higher-yield wheat, started the Green Revolution, and may have saved over a billion lives through better agriculture.