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TIL that the last surviving wife of a Civil War veteran died just 6 months ago. They married in 1936 while she was 17 and he was 93. This practice was common so that young women could receive the veteran's Civil War pension ($73.13/month). She died in December 2020 at the age of 101.

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xVbZg TIL the net contribution of the world's oxygen by forests is zero. The real 'lungs of the earth' are phytoplankton living in the oceans.
6MyW TIL In WW1, the American shotgun was so effective in trench warfare that the Germans claimed that it violated the law of war.
XJ6P TIL A bag of marijuana was the first thing ever bought and sold over the internet
oRVyr TIL the raising of the American Flag on Iwo Jima was not a planned thing, and was also makeshift. They used a drain pipe that the Japanese used to catch rain water in trenches. This was also the first time an American Flag was raised on Japanese soil in WW2.
78P0b TIL the song "Lesbian Seagull" from Beavis & Butt-Head Do America was not written for the film as a comedy bit, but already existed as a real song written in 1979 in response to a scientific study of long-term monogamous lesbian behavior observed in seagulls on Santa Barbara Island.