› added 5 years ago

71

TIL there's a village in England called Fingringhoe.

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d85Md TIL Ancient Egyptian mummies were discovered to have traces of Nicotine, Hashish and Cocaine. The Coca Plant being native at the time to South America leads to speculation of trans-oceanic transport in ancient times.
GAr7G TIL in 1860 that a French man by the name of Antoine de Tounens went to the Araucanía region, proclaimed the Kingdom of Araucanía and Patagonia, and became its first and only king. The country only lasted 2 years as the Chilean authorities occupied the country and arrested him.
7rJW7 TIL that in 1985, Xi Jinping spent 2 weeks with a US family in Iowa in order to study US agriculture.
rkAe TIL “health insurance” was actually cooked up as a ploy by hospitals to fill empty beds. The real impetus to making insurance commonplace is when they made premiums tax-free if paid by employers. Before insurance the average person spent $5 per year on medical care.
9Yg1G TIL The Bill Emerson Humanitarian Trust is a grain reserve of commodities and cash. In 2008 the USDA sold the remaining stocks into an all cash reserve. Since it no longer holds commodities, it can respond to local food crises outside the US, but not to a global one that affects the USA itself.