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TIL During the Great Plague of London, the City Corporation ordered the killing of all cats and dogs, in an effort to prevent the spread of the disease. It's estimated that 40,000 dogs and 200,000 cats were killed, however it was the rats spreading the virus, not cats or dogs.

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VMolZ TIL Steve Jobs hired a new CEO for Apple, John Sculley, who fired him later. He started a new company NeXT, which was later acquired by Apple itself, and eventually Jobs became CEO again, driving Apple to its greatest success. He calls being fired "the best thing that ever happened to him".
QNLB6 TIL, after the death of 27-year-old physicist Henry Moseley at Gallipoli (WWI, 1915), the British Government placed a ban on other scientists of repute serving in front-line roles. Ernest Rutherford believed that Moseley's work would have earned him the Nobel Prize.
7rL5x TIL 99.9% of calico cats are female due to the X chromosome.
p8Lvb TIL there used to be so many oysters in the Chesapeake Bay that they piled up almost to the water's surface, causing navigational hazards. Then we harvested them by the millions, and now the population is down by 99.7%. It's one of "the largest documented declines of a marine species"
VMxkB TIL that according to the terms of his parole, John Hinckley Jr., the would-be assassin of Ronald Reagan, is prohibited from owning any firearms, ammunition, other weapons, or memorabilia of Jodie Foster because of his obsession with the actress.