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TIL That In 1996 during an SAS training exercise 21 year old Bear Grylls broke his back after falling from 16,000 feet due to a torn parachute. His surgeon said it was questionable whether he would ever walk again. 2 years later he climbed Mt. Everest

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0dXR1 TIL At a length of 130m and able to carry more than 7000 men (4000 being rowers) the Tessarakonteres was the largest ship built in antiquity. Built by order of Ptolemy IV Philopator in the 3rd century BCE she required an early dry dock to construct. Ultimately her great size made her impractical.
QNG4L TIL that more New Deal relief funds were allocated to counties where a larger share of the population had radios, even when taking into account factors of income and wealth, suggesting that politicians are more sensitive to the interests of better informed citizens
e0ZvD TIL that India and Pakistan used to be a single country during the British rule, and their partition led to upto 2 million Hindu and Muslim deaths, and migration of 14 million people.
BrL9D TIL about Insulin Shock Therapy, which was a treatment to schizophrenia in the 1950's in which you used to repeatedly inject the patient with insulin to induce comas.
VMdVG TIL that in 1933 6000 people were deported by the Soviet Union to an island in the middle of Siberia and were abandoned there without food or shelter. Within three weeks most of the prisoners were dead due to the widespread episodes of cannibalism. The island became known as “Cannibal Island”.