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TIL During the famine of 1328-30 many cities in Italy expelled people to preserve supplies. Florence took them in and provided aid for them along with its own citizens. They established government taskforces that implemented relief measures and spent about 60k gold florins in aid programs

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WknYN TIL During WW II the US Army was aware that mail to soldiers was critical for morale, but overwhelmed with the volume and space it took to ship. So the resuscitated a British/Eastman Kodak method where every letter was photographed, and the film was shipped, then printed. It was called V Mail.
1am0X TIL DMSO, an organic solvent, has the unusual property that you can "Taste" it by touching it - actually, it directly triggers the nerves that normally react to taste.
nWgnb TIL The 13th Amendment to Abolish Slavery was voted 100% in favor by Republicans but only 20% in favor by Democrats
4XKDa Til the Statue of Liberty's hand sat in Madison Square park for 6 years before being installed. While the French paid for the statue, the US didn't want to pay for the pedestal, so to raise money, photographs were sold to tourists and for 50 cents, you could climb a ladder to the top of the torch.
R5kD1 TIL Blade: Trinity had a troubling production where Wesley Snipes's stand-in appeared more than the actor. A poor script, Snipes's bitterness over the studio using the final Blade film as a launch pad for a Nightstalkers spin-off, and Snipes's intense method impacted the production.