› added 8 years ago

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TIL over 70 cats live in the Hermitage Museum in St. Petersburg, Russia, helping to catch mice who might want to chew on the artworks. They even have their own press secretary!

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5VOMp TIL that former pro skater, Jackass and CKY star Brandon Novak has become a Certified Intervention Professional and professional speaker following a 20 year cycle of substance abuse, and has written two books about his heroin addiction
lND7 TIL that to help illustrate the hippo ballerina scene in ‘Fantasia,’ Disney animators hired a 200-pound woman to move about on a sound stage, studying how her flesh quivered and which parts were under the greatest strain.
GYR4Q TIL a man once broke into Buckingham Palace and entered the Queen's bedroom, dripping blood and carrying a shard of broken glass. The Queen shouted "What are you doing here?!" and ran out. No charges were brought since breaking into Buckingham Palace wasn't classed as a criminal offence at the time.
pY9b8 TIL that palm fronds are extremely hardy and are difficult to process into mulch or compost and can take up to 50 years to decompose on their own; the fronds also account for 3.4% of the 1 million tons of waste each year in the Phoenix, AZ landfills.
6E4v7 TIL When researchers blocked AMPA-receptor removal in rats, they found that the rats were prevented from forgetting the locations of objects. To forget, it seemed that the rat brain had to proactively destroy connections at the synapse. Forgetting is not a failure of memory, but a function of it.