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TIL about "Pimpernel" Smith, a 1941 movie about an adventuring archaeologist who freed concentration camp prisoners. The story inspired real-life rescue operations.

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JYKb8 TIL The influenza epidemic of 1918 killed an estimated 675,000 Americans (far more than the 53,402 who died in combat in World War I). The impact was so profound as to depress average life expectancy in the U.S. by >10 years & may have played a significant role in ending the World War 1 conflict.
l79YA TIL Adelle Hugo, Victor Hugo's daughter, developed schizophrenia in her mid 20's, she became obsessed with a soldier she had initialy rejected and left her home in Jersey to stalk him across all his millitary deployments in Ireland, Canada and finally the Island of Barbados
e0pkk TIL of the Amritsar massacre in India. In April 1919, when Indians, the majority Sikh, gathered to protest in a walled garden against British Colonial rule, British troops opened fire on the peaceful protestors, killing anywhere from 379-1000 and injuring another 1,100.
jNB4v TIL that hens store semen in storage tubules and can periodically release portions of it over the course of a month to produce numerous fertile eggs. If they happen to mate with a male they don't like, they can simply expel the entire sample and produce infertile eggs.
Q7EE TIL that r/todayilearned was temporarily shut down as a form of protest for a beloved long term employee that was allegedly being let go