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TIL Jewish Americans have made a tradition of eating Chinese food during the holiday season since the early 1900s

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kOwXd TIL that the Aral Sea has been nearly fully drained by human irrigation and that this has happened before. Over 600 years ago the Mongols drained the lake too an even lower level than today.
b6eK0 TIL: The Union Army didn't recruit black soldiers until after the Emancipation Proclamation. Yet, the mortality rate amog the United States Colored Troops (USCT) was 35% greater than among other troops even though they it formed 18 months after the Civil War began.
wLvn7 TIL a 'deadline' (1860s) was a line drawn in or around a prison that inmates would be shot dead for crossing.
OG8mX TIL that the Great Pyramid of Giza was the tallest building in the world for over 3800 years of the ~4600 years since its construction. It was not until 1311 that the spire of an English cathedral was built higher.
R5VQw TIL Kwanzaa was created in California in 1966