› added 2 years ago

49

TIL about the forced expulsion of the Chagossians, when the UK, at the request of the US, began expelling the native inhabitants of the Chagos Archipelago in 1968. The entire population of the Chagos was removed to Mauritius and the Seychelles by 1973

Read more wikipedia.org

via reddit.com

eRkJ TIL until World War II, tea was still used as a form of currency in Siberia.
XR66 TIL penguins have an specialized organ that filters salt from their bloodstream, allowing them to drink salt water
6wBl TIL a New Zealand teen set a friend on fire as a prank. In his defense he stated “If he’d stopped, dropped and rolled, it would have just been a joke instead of a serious incident.”
Z81vD TIL The DEA raided Thomas Jefferson's Monticello estate in 1987. It removed the poppy plants that had been planted continually there since Jefferson was alive and using opium from them.
0dRdy TIL about the expulsion of the Turks from Crete. Once composing over a third of the Islands population, the Turkish Population on Crete was expelled and exchanged in 1898 following ethnic violence and the Greco-Ottoman Wars, leaving the island in Greek hands.