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TIL In 2015 a new species of damselfly was discovered in Africa. The scientists who discovered it ended up naming the new species Umma gumma after Pink Floyd's 1969 experimental album Ummagumma.

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LkA4m TIL that in 2013 a novel bat coronavirus was found in a Yunnan cave bat which, unusually, could affect humans; it was extremely similar to the current COVID-19.
VBjOQ TIL that The Royal Philharmonic rarely allows full organ power, but it did for Aurora's The Seed, accompanied by Anna Lapwood.
x8Mg TIL distance-running has skyrocketed in popularity 3 times in modern history, each time in the midst of a major crisis: during the Great Depression, in the 1970s during a recession, race riots, assassinations, and Vietnam, and 1 year after 9/11 it became the fastest-growing outdoor sport in the US.
epKQ6 TIL that in 1959, Claude Shannon, a mathematician from MIT demonstrated that machines can learn by experience using a mechanical mouse that can remember the previous paths that led to an artificial cheese in a maze.
p8nQG TIL that German Snipers in WWI had excellent observational training and killed hundreds of enemy officers. They could identify British officers at hundreds of yards simply by the cut of their breeches.