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TIL: There was a case of British conjoined twins. If not separated, they’d both die in months. If separation was successful, the healthier twin would survive but the surgery would kill the other. The parents refused consent, but a court overruled them, the surgery killed one twin to save the other.

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xVnXB TIL, French Train Driver Andre Tanguy stayed in his seat as an approaching runaway train sped towards him at the platform. He continually warned his own passengers to evacuate the train/platform until he was killed.
16M9V TIL of the submarine USS Tang. It was hit when it's own torpedo boomeranged. 89 crew with 29 trapped. 13 made it out through a hatch but only 9 made to the surface where they were picked up by the Japanese and taken to a POW camp. They survived the war.
BrVZy TIL that it took E. B. White 17 takes to read the death scene of Charlotte, as he recorded the audio version of his book Charlotte's Web. He is said to have walked outside, come back in, and start crying again when he got to that moment, "a grown man crying over the death of an imaginary insect."
kOKG4 TIL the only account of Marco Polo's visit to China is his own first person one. There are no Chinese accounts of his trip and some scholars believe he never actually went at all but made it up using accounts from Persian travellers.
v1Omx TIL APOPO, a Tanzanian wildlife agency trained African Pouch rats to sniff out landmines and diagnose tuberculosis by smelling sputum samples. The rats were so effective that the US Fish and Wildlife Department spent $100,000 on a program where Pouch rats were trained to combat wildlife trafficking.