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TIL that British India tried to get rid of cobras by offering a reward for captured snakes. Locals started breeding cobras & giving them to the government to collect the reward. The British found out & stopped the program. The breeders then released their snakes, causing the population to increase

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bpjN TIL the inside of a cucumber can be 20 degrees cooler than outside - ‘cool as a cucumber’.
0dgyL TIL once commonly known as “the redwood of the east,” American Chestnut trees are almost entirely extinct in the wild as of the 1940s with the exception of small, scattered populations
J1Q5B TIL that subacute sclerosing panencephalitis or Dawson disease is a rare presentation of the measles virus that can survive in the body long term without provoking an immune response. Once symptoms develop (an average of 7 years after primary measles infection), the outcome is invariably fatal.
VA4D TIL the historian Iris Chang, whose book “The Rape of Nanking” reached the New York Times Best Seller list when she was only 29 years old, was deep into research for her fourth book about the Bataan Death March, had a break with reality, and killed herself
dDy6r TIL that the only woman to ever appear on an US Dollar banknote has been Martha Washington. She appeared on the 1886 and 1891 series of one-dollar silver certificates. Her portrait was used again next to her husband, George, on the back of the 1896 one-dollar note