› added 3 months ago

17

TIL about the Hundred Flowers Campaign (1956–57) in China, where the government briefly encouraged open criticism and debate, only to later suppress dissent through arrests and crackdowns.

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e0n5 TIL Bill Nye holds a patent for improved ballet shoes
rQmW TIL the average high school kid today has the same level of anxiety as the average psychiatric patient in the early 1950’s
QJXod TIL Star Destroyer models were illuminated by 100,000 hand wired strands of fiber optics in the original Star Wars trilogy. For the Super Star Destroyer, they switched to brass etching by hand to increase the number to 250,000.
R7AJ1 TIL of Porajmos, Nazi Germany’s and its WWII allies’ effort to commit ethnic cleansing and eventually genocide against Europe’s Romani people. Later research cited by Ian Hancock estimated the death toll to be at about 1.5 million out of an estimated 2 million Roma.
kJLOE TIL Jimmy Carter holds the record for most presidential pardons, pardoning over 200,000 Vietnam War draft dodgers. Least presidential pardons belongs to William Henry Harrison with 0.