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TIL about the HMS "Black Joke" a brazillion slave ship that was captured by British Admiralty and repurposed to hunt slave ships. Over it's five year career it is believed to have freed hundreds of slaves after its renaming from "Henriquetta"

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p8mO4 TIL Roughly 2% of the U.S. population, an estimated 620,000 men, died serving in the American Civil War. As a percentage of today's population the toll would have risen as high as 6 million. For every 3 soldiers killed in battle, 5 more died of disease.
g9WX TIL that the concurrent Navy training and testing could potentially kill hundreds of whales and dolphins and disable thousands over the next five years.
6lbX TIL in the attempt to make pandas mate they are given Viagra and shown panda porn to get them in the mood.
dNgK TIL the producers of The Simpsons considered aborting the series if the second episode’s animation turned out as bad as the first, which was so appalling that after seeing it for the first time, they had to redo 70% of before it could go to air.
0vL TIL Sir Patrick Stewart and Sir Ian McKellen didn’t know how to play chess until they learned it to shoot X-Men.