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TIL that the Guiness World Records discontinued the "Heaviest Pets" category in 1998 to deter people from over-feeding their pets just to appear in the book.

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via reddit.com

e005 TIL that in 1967, German lab workers working with Ugandan monkeys came down with an illness. They then documented their own illness, and eventually they isolated the virus.
5Y1yQ TIL a group of amateur astronomers around the world hunt and track government spy satellites. Governments classify these top-secret missions, but a group of dedicated spy hunters tracks the satellites and publishes the data for fun.
KrjG TIL that paternity tests are outlawed in France and Germany “due to fears that more families could be broken by divorce if all fathers were given access to them.”
DQ4jD TIL the song 'Yankee Doodle' was used by British soldiers before the Revolutionary War to mock American soldiers, stereotyping them as rural simpletons who would think putting a feather in their caps would make them 'Macaroni' (i.e. cool), but was later used by Americans as an anthem of defiance.
mXey TIL Today is the 97th anniversary of the Battle of Vimy Ridge. Three German divisions held the ridge and after multiple American and British attempts to take the ridge, Canada captured it. It is widely regarded as the “birth” of Canada as a independent country.