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159

TIL of the “Great Sparrow Campaign” (打麻雀运动), during which Mao Zedong ordered the Chinese people to kill all sparrows, because they were eating farmers’ seeds. With the sparrows dead, the insect population exploded, and locusts devastated the rice fields.

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x0yg TIL Friend stars were paid $75,000 per episode in season three, $85,000 in season four, $100,000 in season five, $125,000 in season six, $750,000 in seasons seven and eight, and $1 million in seasons nine and ten, making Aniston, Cox, and Kudrow the highest paid TV actresses of all-time.
d8wJB TIL about psychosocial dwarfism, a condition where a child can stop growing due to an extremely stressful environment. It can cause the body to completely stop growing but is generally temporary; regular growth will resume when the source of stress is removed.
Lk8yQ TIL Pigs will eat every part of the human body (including bones) and, if left alone with it for long enough, will fully consume the body.
Mer90 TIL that more people are buried in Rochester, NY's Mount Hope Cemetery than are currently alive in the city limits (350,000 buried to 210,000 alive).
nm6Y TIL that Ben Cohen, co founder of Ben and Jerry’s ice cream, cannot smell. The reason the ice cream is characteristically chunky is because in order to compensate for his lack of taste he would add big pieces of fruit to the ice cream to satisfy his need for texture in food.