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TIL During the American Revolutionary War the French had to defend their trading posts from the British since French allied themselves with the American colonists revolting against the British Empire, forcing Indians to fight amongst each other in India in a civil war over the trading posts.

mx4jo TIL Honeybees, despite having the brain size of a sesame seed, can count up to four and can understand the concept of zero.
Lmjr TIL On May 25th, 2015 a man discovered an orphaned baby moose in Yellowstone National Park in Montana. When he reported the calf to local authorities they shot the baby and blew up the carcasses of it, it’s dead mother and sibling to prevent grizzly bears from being drawn to the area.
We4L TIL one of the Popes was a 100% accident. In the Middle Ages, cardinals would often vote for a random candidate on the first papal ballot in order to see how the other cardinals were leaning, but in 1334 this backfired when they all voted for the same person: the very surprised Pope Benedict XII.
QJBna TIL the 1959 film "The Tingler" was about a parasite that causes tingling sensations in victims. The films producers rigged surplus WWII aircraft motors to random theater seats, so viewers would "feel the tingler" when it attacked. Some viewers were also paid to pretend to scream and faint
eGkD TIL Europeans feared eating tomatoes for 200 years, because when wealthy Europeans using pewter plates, high in lead content, ate tomatoes off the plates, the high acidity in tomatoes would cause the fruit to leach lead from the plate, resulting in many deaths from lead poisoning