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TIL An Italian NGO decided to teach Zambians how to grow food and paid locals to grow tomatoes in a fertile valley that lacked agriculture.When the tomatoes grew large and ripe, 200 hippos came out from the river and ate everything. “That’s why we have no agriculture here”, Zambians explained

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wLQ1P TIL that the peak of TV attention can be assigned an exact date: Sunday, September 9, 1956, when Elvis Presley made his first appearance on television, on CBS’s Ed Sullivan Show. Its 82.6 percent share of US viewers has never been equaled or bettered.
jEEp TIL that France lost so many workers during its failed attempt to dig the Panama Canal, that for a time their project’s MAIN source of income was selling the corpses (pickled in brine water) to medical schools all over the world as cadavers.
9wPWQ TIL that 80% of Army personnel records of soldiers discharged from November 1, 1912 to January 1, 1960 were lost in a fire at the National Personnel Records Center (NPRC) in 1973. No duplicate copies of these records were ever maintained, nor were microfilm copies produced.
nayG TIL that Alberta, Canada is the only inhabited region on Earth that is free of Norwegian rats.
680Y TIL NFL cheerleaders are given extensive rulebooks governing their everyday behavior, including what conversations to avoid, when to change underwear, what tampons to use, when to wash their feet, how to eat meat, soup, and bread, and to “not be overly opinionated about anything.”