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TIL that most butterfly’s depicted in art are shown as dead

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nejLY TIL that the remote Ascension Island in the Atlantic was known as a barren, desert island when it was discovered in the 1700s, but today boasts one of the world's largest artificial forests, planned by Charles Darwin and botanist Joseph Hooker in order to make the island livable.
MrL0 TIL Nelson Mandela lost his son to the AIDS epidemic and personally wrote checks to help fund the cost of treatment for AIDS patients
MeayW TIL Paul Edmund Strzelecki, a Polish gentleman, saved over 200,000 children during the Irish famine.
KAgJ TIL during the prohibition era, the US government added poison to industrial alcohol to discourage consumption. People continued to drink it, so the government added more and they killed 10,000 people.
awXgy TIL about Ambroise Paré, a barber surgeon (he was both) who discovered that a mixture made of egg yolk, oil of roses and turpentine was more effective in treating war wounds than boiling oil, which was the standard treatment method at that time.