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TIL of the 1980 book "Michelle Remembers", which sold millions of copies and spurred the Satanic panic of that era. Oprah even had the two authors on her show and presented their accounts of satanic abuse as pure fact. The book was later discredited.

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W194 TIL The cost of college textbooks has risen 812% in the past 30 years—that’s more than healthcare costs, housing prices, and college tuitions, all of which have risen faster than the rate of inflation.
Z89kv TIL the near-extinction of the American bison was a deliberate plan by the US Army to starve Native Americans into submission. One colonel told a hunter who felt guilty shooting 30 bulls in one trip, "Kill every buffalo you can! Every buffalo dead is an Indian gone.”
9YR8X TIL there was a Battle of Thermopylae in WWII, which featured outnumbered New Zealand troops holding off a larger Nazi formation at the cost of horrendous casualties
vP888 TIL that Gwen Stefani is now older than Rue McClanahan was when she started playing Blanche on Golden Girls
AN9Bg TIL So Long, and Thanks for All the Fish was written by Douglas Adams when his editor Sonny Mehta, locked him in a hotel room to force him to write it after becoming fed up with Adams constantly procrastinating and failing to meet deadlines.