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TIL in 1958 Mao Zedong began a campaign to eliminate the Eurasian Tree Sparrow, leading to a severe ecological imbalance and contributing to the Great Chinese Famine where 15-55 million people starved to death.

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GYaej TIL: Queen's university's Medical School banned black medical students in 1918 and did not consider black applicants until 1965. The ban, however, was not officially removed until 2018.
R7Ydj TIL about Braess’s Paradox: adding an extra road to a network can cause more traffic for everyone - even without any increase in the number of cars!
rRamd TIL of Operation Pastorius, a German WWII mission of sabotage inside the United States. It failed primarily due to defections, but was in danger of being compromised right from the start as one of the agents, when drunk, announced to patrons at a bar in Paris that he was a secret agent.
Br5Ze TIL Linus Torvald originally wanted to name his OS Freax but it was an administrator from one of FTP server from which the OS was hosted who put the files under under a folder named "Linux".
5Yg0D TIL that Wolfenstein's B.J. Blazkowicz is the father of Billy Blaze from Commander Keen, who grew up to become the father of Doomguy, meaning Wolfenstein is a prequel to Doom.