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TIL Henry Ford bought an area of Brazilian rainforest the size of Connecticut to build 'Fordlandia', the greatest rubber plantation known to man, where alcohol, women and football were banned. It produced almost no rubber, immediately descended into rioting and disease, and was abandoned

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oRdLR TIL Prisoners in Birkenau concentration camp during Nazi Germany had better chances of survival (60%) if they worked in the latrines. Nazi officials avoided those areas, reducing the risk of abuse. Workers could also recover food other prisoners' vomit, gain privileged info, and receive bribes.
vPR6R TIL about John Buettner-Janusch, a professor that went to jail twice; first for for manufacturing LSD, and second time for trying to poison the judge
rRw44 TIL Blockbusting is a technique whereby realtors would buy a home on an all-white street, sell or rent it to a black family, and then buy up the remaining homes from whites at cut-rate prices, then sell them to black families at hefty profits. This is later made illegal by the 1968 Fair Housing Act.
vP8W4 TIL on November 12, 1833, there was a meteor shower so intense that it was described as meteors "falling like snowflakes". It was so intense that it was thought to be the end of the world, but at the same time it gave birth to the study of meteor astronomy.
jNxxa TIL Dr. John Fryer of Philadelphia appeared at the 1972 APA convention wearing a rubber mask to deliver a speech about the hardships of being a psychiatrist and gay. His speech was vital to getting homosexuality off the list of mental disorders.