› added 5 years ago

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TIL that by transmitting diseases, mosquitoes cause the deaths of more people than any other animal taxon: over 700,000 each year. It has been claimed that almost half of the people who have ever lived have died of mosquito-vectored disease.

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N79ob TIL Barter wasn't what societies used before money. Gift-giving and credit were the main means of exchanging goods and services.
W7vDA TIL A Single Nuclear Bomb over Kansas Could Cause An EMP Over All of the Continental US
xV7LB TIL that in 1978, an inspection of a damaged U.S. Navy ship revealed the remnants of claws from the tentacles of a giant squid. The claws were much larger than any that had been seen by scientists, indicating that the squid was of a size substantially greater than any that had been documented.
964p TIL Adolf Hitler’s nephew escaped from Germany, moved to the United States, and enlisted in the US Navy fighting the axis powers during WWII.
wGr6 TIL that “You can’t eat your cake and have it, too” is the correct form of the proverb, because its order is what illustrates the impossibility. The Unabomber got the order correct in both his manifesto & private writing & this was 1 of the linguistic anachronisms that helped the FBI identify him