› added 4 years ago

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TIL bats were considered birds until the 1700s. Also whales and manatees were thought to be fish.

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yVAkV TIL a US Air Force captain with security clearance named William Hughes vanished for 35 years. He was suspected of defecting to Russia, before reappearing in the Bay Area in 2018 living under a new name.
wLEg8 TIL that Rolls-Royce cars have an anti theft mechanism that retracts the "Spirit of Ecstasy" ornament should it be jostled.
R5ok9 TIL the “20Q” (20 questions) handheld game, a toy released in 2003 and famous for its scary level of accuracy, actually used a basic implementation of an AI neural network. It used training data gathered from users of a web-browser based implementation of the game which launched in 1994.
697jJ TIL Fifty-seven percent of Afghan women marry before 16 years of age, 29% are forced into marriage to settle tribal conflicts, 84% are illiterate, and the average woman gives birth to eight children. Afghan women also have the highest prevalence of self-immolation in the world.
ANQrl TIL of BioSteel, high-strength fiber-based material produced by goats, genetically modified to produce spider silk.