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TIL From 1847, Rudolf Wolf started counting sunspots. He peered through a telescope every day, if he could, and recorded the number of spots he observed. Today, all sorts of models use Wolf's sunspot record to predict things like the climate, the orbit of satellites, and the stability of power grids

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b67mj TIL That the deadliest loss for the British in the American Revolutionary War was in Nicaragua.
OoMvX TIL Zebras are black with white stripes. It was previously believed that zebras were white animals with black stripes, since some zebras have white underbellies. Embryological evidence, however, shows that the animal's background color is black and the white stripes and bellies are additions.
b6JYp TIL that when casting Walter White for Breaking Bad, the role was originally offered to John Cusack and Matthew Broderick. It wasn't until after they turned it down that the executives saw Bryan Cranstons X-Files episode and cast him for the role.
KOnZa TIL inventor of the Murphy-Bed, William Lawrence Murphy (1856-1957), created his first hide-away bed as means to convert his one-room apartment into a parlour, specifically to host the company of his future wife. It was considered inappropriate at the time to for a woman to enter a man's bedroom.
VMwJB TIL about a theory on human’s relationship with mind-altering-substances like the DMT. It asserts that in order for our body to even be able to interact with some of these chemical compounds, our genetics must have been interacting with them for a really long time.