› added 5 years ago

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TIL During WWII, there was a unit of Japanese schoolgirls who looked after Kamikaze pilots before they went on suicide missions. Called the Nadeshiko, they were aged between 14-15 and lived and worked on a military base with the men, preparing meals and befriending them before they went to die.

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6EayY TIL that historically, polio was not widely fatal. 72% of all infections were asymptomatic; 24% resulted in mild illness; 1-5% resulted in more serious but short-term symptoms. But polio was still feared, due to the <1% of cases that led to permanent paralysis and death in a further 5-30% of them.
x7wk TIL: The astronomer Guillaume Le Gentil failed to measure the transit of Venus in 1761, waited 8 years in Africa to try again, failed because of bad weather, and then came home to find that his relatives had declared him dead and plundered his estate.
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