› added 11 months ago

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TIL about the US Navy's Marine Mammal Program which trains dolphins and sea lions to detect, locate, mark and recover objects in harbors, coastal areas, and at depth in the open sea.

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ZpAdY TIL In 1877 Jules Janssen used a special 5.5 inch solar telescope to take the first photos of the Sun showing granulation on its surface. Of the 6000 images made for his 1904 Solar Atlas, only seven survived
wmVJ TIL Blackbeard was remarkably judicious in his use of force. In dozens of eyewitness accounts, there is not a single instance in which he killed anyone prior to his final, fatal battle with the Royal Navy. “I haven’t seen a single piece of evidence that Blackbeard ever used violence against anyone.”
Nkn8 TIL that once Iron begins to form in the heart of a giant star it only has seconds to live before it explodes into a supernova and most of the heavier elements such as Gold and Silver are formed in the resulting explosion.
6bQZ TIL of the International Friendship Exhibition in North Korea, which contains a VHS copy of Space Jam.
wLv7M TIL the United States made it illegal to discriminate based on an individual's DNA sequence in 2008, an act that was passed almost unanimously by the house, senate, and executive branch.