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777

TIL that Puff the Magic Dragon really was written as a children’s poem and isn’t a euphemism for smoking weed.

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9Y1m7 TIL of how the U.S. Government set up the first bank for "newly emancipated Black communities" after the Civil War; but in the 1870s, Henry Cooke & Ulysses S. Grant got away with scamming the Freedman's Bank out of $75,000 ($1.77M in 2020), crippling the bank into bankruptcy...
DXmV TIL that tough on crime politician, Ernie Preate, was sentenced to prison himself. When he first lined up for diner “It was just a sea of black faces,” Preate remembers “I said to myself, ‘Oh, my God, I helped create this.’”
78xXX TIL the Shang Chinese (1600-1050 BCE) engaged in widespread systemic ritual human sacrifice, and Zhou kingdom abetted Shang in providing captive tributes as their vassal state
8axaP TIL it is possible to distinguish the parts of Berlin that were formerly West and East from the space: “East” Berlin uses sodium vapor lamps which produce a yellow color, whilst “West” Berlin uses fluorescent lamps produce a white color.
KYDGa TIL: That fungi have a range of vital roles from helping plants draw water + nutrients from soil to medicines that can lower blood cholesterol or enable organ transplants. But they have a darker side: devastating trees, crops, other plants across the world and wiping out animals such as amphibians.