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TIL in the twilight of the Cold War, the United States spent millions of dollars to supply Afghan schoolchildren with textbooks filled with violent images and militant Islamic teachings, part of covert attempts to spur resistance to the Soviet occupation.

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l7XoK TIL Every two years, The Inuit come to Puvirnituq for approximately a week for the Snow Festival. In 2005, participants made a giant igloo 40m around and 5m high, and welcomed 400 people inside simultaneously
GAxNj TIL that the original letter of wishes from Princess Diana's will about her godchildren receiving a quarter of her personal property after her death was ignored "because it did not contain certain language required by British law".
m1pvO TIL of Haitian mud cookies or bonbon te. The cookies — made of dirt, butter and salt — hold little nutritional value, but manage to keep dirt poor Haitians alive. Still on a per capita basis, Haiti is richer than countries like Pakistan, Nigeria, or the Congo. The taste of dirt lingers for ho urs.
nKK7 TIL scientists were monitoring whale stress levels by analyzing their poop and found that their stress plummeted sharply after the 9/11 attacks. After shipping traffic was halted, the oceans quieted down and made it easier for whales to communicate with each other
b9RV4 TIL of Grigori Perelman, a Russian mathematician who proved the Poincaré conjecture (one of the Millennium Prize problems). He later quit his job, turned down the $1 million prize as well as the Fields Medal, and is thought to have withdrawn from the field of mathematics entirely.