› added 7 years ago

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TIL in 1958, Mao Zedong ordered the Chinese people to kill all the sparrows in the country to protect the rice crops. The effort backfired as, without the sparrows to eat insects, the locust population exploded and wiped out food crops, contributing to the starvation of tens of millions of people.

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YpjeP TIL farmers in Africa use beehives to protect their crops from the largest and arguably most destructive crop pest in Africa: the elephant. Bees can’t sting through their thick hides but they can sting sensitive areas like the eyes, mouth, and inner trunk - they hear the hive buzzing and flee.
R1Kj TIL Deadpool is immortal in the comics because Thanos wants to keep him away from Death in the afterlife
QoZp TIL that 3 years ago, 8 men successfully stole $50M worth of diamonds
W7g8A TIL many English words and phrases are loaned from Chinese merchants interacting with British sailors like "chop chop," "long time no see," "no pain no gain," "no can do," and "look see"
5YPQ9 TIL that some 430,000 years ago, high in the Atapuerca Mountains of northern Spain, a lethal assault was committed. The victim, a young adult Neanderthal, received two blows to the head, just above the left eye.