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TIL that the highest-flying living thing on Earth is a type of bacteria called Bacillus stratosphericus, which can be found floating in the air at altitudes of up to 41 kilometers (25 miles)

Read more microbewiki.kenyon.edu

via reddit.com

6mmw TIL that the Oxford English Dictionary lists words with the suffix ’-ize’ (e.g., realize, organize) over the more popular British English ’-ise’, stating it to be both phonetic and closer to its Greek origin
N7akP TIL that there's less than 2000m2 (a third of an american football field) of arable land left in the world per head.
KOB6R TIL of William Walker, an American lawyer who raised an army of 45 men and managed to conquered Baja California for a short time. He went on to try and conquer Nicaragua three times, once successfully. Later he tried to conquer some islands that were about to be returned to Honduras from Britain.
v1Adj TIL John Von Neumann was an American polymath who is known as the last of the great mathematicians. On his deathbed, he entertained his brother by reciting the first lines of each page of Goethe’s Faust word-for-word by heart. He knew state secrets, so federal agents guarded his bed till his death.
eprk TIL there is a “zip bomb” called 42.zip that is only 42 kilobytes when zipped, but is 4.5 Petabytes uncompressed.