› added 3 years ago

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TIL that in order to aid recruitment during WWI, the British allowed men from the same town to serve together in "pals battalions". This was stopped after the Battle of the Somme, in which casualties were so high amongst some units that almost the entire male population of some towns was wiped out.

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KYNd6 TIL that ~8 billion people are estimated to have latent tuberculosis infection (LTBI), meaning they carry the Mycobacterium tuberculosis bacteria without exhibiting active disease symptoms (~25% of the worlds population)
LQdb0 TIL When threatened, a female quokka may drop her joey from her pouch to divert the predator's attention while she escapes.
85YL TIL that the genetic testing of a boy who died 12,500 years ago proved that descendants of all Native Americans, including South & Central American tribes, can be traced back at least 24,000 years to a group of early Asians and Europeans who mated near Lake Baikal in what is now Siberia.
oOO7 TIL that George Washington, Ulysses S. Grant and Dwight D. Eisenhower are the only Presidents not to have held a political office when running for President of the United States
r6e TIL that Coke contains phosphoric acid to prevent vomiting due to overwhelming sweetness.