› added 6 months ago

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TIL that Andrée de Jongh, the mastermind that led the Comet Line during WWII, was saved from execution because Gestapo officers did not believe that such a small young girl could lead such an operation. The network, consisting of mainly young women, smuggled shot down airmen from Belgium to Spain.

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8aZlK TIL that when a plane was hijacked over Switzerland in 2014, the neighboring countries of Italy and France had to send their own fighter jets to the scene because the incident happened outside of the Swiss Air Force's business hours, and even hijackings weren't important enough to pay for overtime.
rNVKM TIL: Egyptian burial sites also have "meat mummies" which is mummified meat so the rulers have something to eat along with their mummified servants. In Ancient Rome, funeral banquets were held in front of the tomb and the mourners would pour alcohol into the corpse's mouth.
XEvGQ TIL that in 2019, scientists observed the radioactive decay of xenon-124. Described as an "ultra-rare event", Xenon's half-life is one of the slowest observed, with a decay time more than a trillion times longer than the history of the universe.
ANQkg TIL about Mrs. Winslow's Soothing Syrup, a medicine used in the early 1900s to quiet infants and teething children. Popular in the US and UK it took twenty years of doctors' complaints before it was withdrawn from the market for being a "baby killer." The main ingredient was morphine.
e0PV4 TIL about an Indian maharaja who legally adopted 1000 Ukrainian children orphaned by WW2. He took them to India, kept them safe and brought in Ukrainian teachers to educate them, all using his own money.