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TIL when Robert E Lee and the Confederate army surrendered, Union soldiers saluted them and gave them rations (the confederate soldiers were starving). Normally victorious armies would taunt defeated ones, but Ulysses S Grant respected the Confederates too much and ordered that they be treated well.

wL7JP TIL Miami Planetarium director and PBS Star Jack Horkheimer was born with bronchiectasis, a chronic lung condition. As a young adult, he received so many chest X-rays, he suffered radiation sickness and lost all of his hair.
X0OwE TIL the last American Civil War widow died in 2020. Helen Viola Jackson was 17 when she married 93 year old veteran James Bolin. They married so that the Jackson would be eligible for Bolin's pension after the teenager helped the elderly Bolin with chores. Jackson never applied for the pension.
J1JZ8 TIL On Jan. 30, 1607, the water levels in the Bristol Channel in the UK suddenly rose to more than 25 feet above sea level. Water flooded towns and villages along the coast in England and Wales, causing an estimated 2000 deaths and thousands of animals drowned and farm fields of above 200sqmi ruined
a5XA TIL that a guy named Seth Putnam wrote a song about how being in a coma was stupid, and soon after went into a coma himself. After he awoke, when asked how it felt to be in a coma he said, “It was just as f*cking stupid as I wrote about in my song”.
PwpE TIL that cheating and creating cheats for online games is officially a crime in south korea