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85

TIL: Bee stings smell like bananas

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BgYOr TIL that the Medjool date palm (today the most common date cultivar) almost went extinct from disease in the 1920s but was saved when an American botanist acquired eleven shoots to take to the U.S. from Morocco. Nine survived, from which all modern Medjool offshoots originate.
9Yma6 TIL a secret society, the "Knights of the Golden Circle," plotted for the US to annex and enslave Central America & the Caribbean in order to create a massive Slave State empire. The US even had real opportunities to annex more of Mexico, which Northern abolitionists blocked to prevent such plans.
VBvnp TIL y2k cost 300 billion dollars to fix.
9KZr TIL of a Japanese air ace who was shot in the face during a dogfight. Blind in one eye and part paralysed, “he flew upside down to prevent blood from blinding his other eye”, flew 5 hours back to base, made his report and then had surgery without anasthesia.
Z8Gvo TIL In World War II, British soldiers got a ration of three sheets of toilet paper a day. Americans got 22.