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17

TIL that a 12 year old boy enlisted to fight in WWI after lying about his age and fought in the Battle of the Somme at 13 before his mother revealed his true age and brought him home.

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KjyR TIL that the smallest living bird is nary larger than a bee and weighs less than a single US penny
jZmv TIL: The 1938 labor law giving protections to working children excludes agriculture. As a result approximately 500,000 children pick ¼ of the food produced in the U.S.
W7keX TIL A killing committed on an iceberg outside of any country's territorial waters led to such a massive kerfuffle over the questions of jurisdiction and who had the right to try the defendant that it is being examined as a possible case study in the event murder occurs in outer space.
YlyW TIL in 1926, Agatha Christie vanished without a trace. Thousands of volunteers helped search, along with planes in the sky, and dogs on the ground. After 11 days, a musician recognized her at a hotel, where she was living under a fake name. Christie died without ever having explained her absence.
VBOlk TIL the writers of In Living Color put decoy sketches in the script packets that were given to the Fox execs in order to preoccupy the censor enough to allow them to get away other material.