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172

TIL about the Bengal famine of 1942-43, in which the British allowed at least 1.5 million Bengalis to die of starvation. Only when Ian Stephens broke with British censorship and published pictures starving people and bodies did the British start to provide relief.

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0wZkA TIL of Skarð, a village on the Feroes Islands that was abandoned in 1913, when the entire male population perished on a fishing accident.
OnOa TIL that a digital rectal massage can successfully cure the hiccups
J1OBQ TIL "The blood of the covenant is thicker than the water of the womb" is a recent and unsourced saying, and nothing indicates it is the true origin of the phrase "blood is thicker than water"
BaD TIL, upon the advent of wood [400mya], it took fungi 50mil yrs to evolve a way to decompose it. Until then, wood just piled up, never to decay. It is this single fact that led to the Carboniferous period [BBC doc.]
jNPnj TIL Herbert Hoover was so fat that his doctor invented Hooverball, where "On a tennis-like court, two teams of three players throw a 6-pound medicine ball back and forth over an 8-foot net." Hoover lost 21 pounds in his term.