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TIL Of more than 10 million enslaved Africans to reach the Western Hemisphere, less than 4% of the total came to North America. To be dwarfed by 1.3 million brought to Spanish Central America, 4 million brought to British, French, Dutch & Danish holdings in the Caribbean and 4.8 million to Brazil.

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vlGB TIL in 1973, three astronauts on the Skylab 4 space station went on strike after being over worked, demanding more time for contemplating the universe and in Pogue’s words “studying the, the Earth below, and ourselves”: the first strike in space.
XEW86 TIL that a 2,000 year old Roman cosmetic cream was discovered intact. The owner’s fingerprints where they last touched the cream can still be seen
M7V7A TIL about Sarah Josepha Hale. She wrote the poem "Mary had a Little Lamb" and was editor of the most influential women's magazine of the time. Helping to found Vassar College. Over the course of 17 years she wrote five different presidents urging them to make Thanksgiving a national holiday.
9wAnm TIL that, inspired by the Maginot Line in France, the British built a defensive network in Hong Kong. Called the Gin Drinkers Line or Oriental Maginot Line, it was designed to hold off a Japanese invasion for six months. Hit by understaffing and a malaria outbreak, it only lasted two days.
W7Oo4 TIL that there is only one confirmed attempt by British colonists to infect natives with smallpox. In 1763, native warriors laid siege to Fort Pitt. After negotiations to abandon the fort failed, the British gave the emissaries two blankets and a handkerchief from a smallpox infected patient