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TIL, during a 1998 renovation of Benjamin Franklin’s house, the bones of 10 people (6 of them children) were found in a windowless room in the basement.

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wLGeE TIL the U.S. Navy tried to remove a whale carcass with dynamite. A veteran with explosives training warned the amount of dynamite was far too much – advice that went unheeded. His brand-new car, purchased during a "Get a Whale of a Deal" promotion, was then flattened by a chunk of falling blubber.
mxKgY TIL in 1964 a super cyclone destroyed a town called Dhanushkodi, making it into a ghost town. The storm overturned a train entering it's railway station killing over 200 passengers. 4 radio operators braved the storm to continue broadcasting, and survived by clinging on to a bridge for 12 hours.
gxnW TIL: Before the Terracotta army, when chinese emperors died all their servants were killed to aid them in the afterlife. Building the terracotta army spared emperor Qin from killing more than 8000 people.
R7bow TIL creation of the most sacred fire in a Zoroastrian temple requires combining flames from 16 different sources, one of which is a funeral pyre; however, funeral pyres are forbidden in Zoroastrianism as corpses are thought to defile the flame.
kONkg TIL residents of Bikini Atoll were relocated by the US govt to much smaller islands without adequate food supply multiple times. After 20 years of starving they were allowed to return home, only to find it irradiated. They were relocated again, but their new island floods, and they must move AGAIN.