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TIL Wolfgang Engels, an East German soldier who had helped build the barbed-wire fences that initially separated the two Berlins, stole a tank and drove it through the wall itself. Despite getting caught in the barbed wire and shot twice, he managed to escape.

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NW18 TIL the biological theory that males are naturally promiscuous and females naturally monogamous was largely based on one study of fruit flies from 1948
NXEZ8 TIL about Hugh Thompson Jr, the Hero of My Lai. During the Vietnam war he stopped the massacre of My Lai perpetrated by US forces upon unarmed civilians at My Lay and rescued several civilians. He and his crew even held US soldiers at bay with guns as he rescued a 6 year old among a pile of corpses.
0Gop TIL corn [maize] needs to be cooked in limewater before its nutrients can be absorbed into the human body. While Native Americans knew this, early New World colonial settlers did not, which resulted in many deaths from malnutrition for those who using it as a staple food.
jN8Va TIL Ving Rhames gave his Golden Globe to Jack Lemmon (1998)
VB6D TIL Leonardo DiCaprio donated $1,000,000 to the Wildlife Conservation Society at Russia’s tiger summit, causing Prime Minister Vladimir Putin to describe him as a “muzhik” or “real man”