› added 6 years ago

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TIL that mushroom therapy is now being used to help treat depression, known for rebooting the brain and creating new connections. (2018)

J1Wrv TIL of Eddie Slovik. Court-martialed for desertion in WWII, he is the only US soldier to be executed for purely military offenses since the Civil War. He said he deserted because prison was better than combat, and anticipated a light sentence. He was executed to deter others from thinking similarly.
nW0X9 TIL Hungarian and Finnish are one of each others closley related languages and are in the same language family (Uealic.) This link is due to shared ancestry in Western Siberia. They are unrelated and share nearly nothing in common to the vast majority of other European languages.
oRY7R TIL the Battle of Antietam during the US Civil War saw 53,632 Union soldiers against 30,646 Confederate soldiers. The 12 hours of brawl led to 22,727 casualties from both sides, and became a major turning point in the Union's favor.
0w97L TIL of the "Hydraulic Empire" theory. It states that civilizations developing in areas with low abundance of water are fated to develop regulating systems and ultimately despotism, and that Europe developed republicanism due to a large excess of it.
wMw6 TIL photographer Mathew Brady captured over 7000 photos of the US Civil War (including the portrait of Lincoln that would be used for the $5 bill), which have become the most important visual documentation of the period. He died in debt after the US gov’t did not buy his master-copies after the war.