› added 12 years ago

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TIL, in the 1850’s, the South African Xhosa tribe had a teenage prophet who claimed all crops had to be burned and all cattle be killed, so that the spirits can sweep the British settlers to sea. 300k-400k cattle were killed, tragically resulting in famine that even caused cannibalism.

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44lb TIL that the Nazis were willing to deport all Jews to Madagascar instead of killing them; Hitler even signed off on this in 1938. However, they lacked a method of transportation, and the result was the Holocaust.
mxM7P TIL that in 2014 an orangutan named Sandra was considered "a non-human person" by an Argentinian court, thus resulting in her release from the Buenos Aires Zoo to go to a sanctuary. But in 2016, an appellate court reversed the ruling of Justice Liberatori that Sandra was a non-human person
XRnQ TIL: The National Federation of the Blind has a program where Santa will mail braille letters to children who are blind. Parents have until December 16th to request a braille letter from Santa.
M7jyB TIL that Dr. Seuss wrote a training film for the US military called “Our Job in Japan,” meant to train soldiers for the military occupation of the country. It was suppressed by Douglas MacArthur for being too sympathetic to the Japanese.
WE8N TIL a man was hit by a Metro train going 70mph and his flying body parts injured a woman. She sued his estate on the theory that “"If you do something as stupid as this guy did, you have to be responsible for what comes from it”