› added 9 months ago

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TIL that elephants exhibit remarkable altruism. In India, an elephant refused a trainer's instruction to lower a log into a hole when it noticed a sleeping dog inside. Elephants have been observed helping injured elephants, rescuing other animals, and even assisting humans in distress.

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9Y5g7 TIL that a Spanish town mailed dog poop back to offenders. A team of volunteers looked for careless dog owners and struck up conversations to learn the dog's name, which made it possible to identify the owner via pet records and mail back the poop, labeled "Lost Property." Violations dropped by 70%.
v0eD TIL At age 16, John Smith of Pocahontas fame was a pirate, sold into slavery in Turkey, had a love affair with his Turkish mistress, killed her husband and three others in a single duel, escaped to Russia, and accidentally blew his genitals off.
d8OJZ TIL ancient Romans used to eat hallucinogenic fish at parties to get high.
WkrYL TIL that in the 1700s, pills made out of the element antimony were taken orally as a laxative for constipated bowels. Once they passed through, they were retrieved from the excrement to be used again. Some families passed down the same pill from one generation to the next.
J1LlQ TIL 2024 is the year the US Dept of Health and Human Services banned hospitals from performing non-consensual breast, pelvic, prostate, and rectal exams for “educational and training purposes” by medical students and practitioners on patients under anesthesia.