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TIL of the HMS Black Joke, a former slave ship captured and given to the British West Africa squadron. Over a 5 year career she captured dozens of slave ships and freed thousands of African slaves bound for the Western Hemisphere.

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loyPG TIL Henry Heimlich, the inventor of the Heimlich maneuver, has a son, Peter, who is devoted to exposing him as a serial liar and con artist. Peter says his father paid off the study that persuaded the American Red Cross to change its response to choking to Heimlich's.
W79pB TIL that in Austria, public insurance requires scientific proof of effectiveness in order to reimburse medical treatments, but exceptions are made for homeopathy.
wLmx1 TIL In the film Osmosis Jones, Bill Murray's character mentions a "National Chicken Wing Festival" in Buffalo, New York. While the festival did not exist during the filming of the movie, this mention caused organizers to create an annual festival in Buffalo which has been active now for 16 years.
R7Wo8 TIL during the Siege of Leningrad during WW2, many soviets within the city resorted to cannibalism. Over 2500 people were caught and arrested for cannibalism, including a mother who smothered her eighteen-month-old to feed her three older children
4kVGR TIL that, unlike wolves, dogs in the wild are not "pack animals." Free-ranging dogs form "loose, transitory associations" instead of packs, drawn together by a scarce resource such as food, and then go their separate ways.