› added 10 years ago

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TIL that Bic pen caps have a hole to reduce the risk of suffocation if accidentally inhaled.

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8DaP TIL in 1958, Mao Zedong ordered the Chinese people to kill all the sparrows in the country to protect the rice crops. The effort backfired as, without the sparrows to eat insects, the locust population exploded and wiped out food crops, contributing to the starvation of tens of millions of people.
8aXNL TIL that a Soviet teenager Zinaida Portnova killed over 100 Nazis by poisoning them, Betrayed and captured, she is said to have shot the Nazi detective who captured her.
rRpDM TIL The Philippines sent 1,000 troops to the Korean war as crew for US tanks. Tanks never came and they were forced to face 40,000 North Korean and Chinese soldiers during the Great Spring Offensive and managed to hold their portion of the line and get surrounded as the line beside them collapsed.
XE6x6 TIL that up until the year 1916, London's famed department store Harrods offered packages of morphine and cocaine complete with syringe and spare needles, which was recommended as “A Useful Present for Friends at the Front.”
6Wol TIL Theodore Roosevelt believed that criminals should have been sterilized.