› added 4 years ago

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TIL about 13-year old Eliza Armstrong who was purchased for £5 by journalist W.T. Stead in his attempt to expose sex slavery in Victorian London. Though his newspaper story led to tighter laws protecting women & girls, he was still arrested & jailed for abduction & procurement.

JVlB TIL that the apples sown by Johnny Appleseed were largely sour and inedible, and were usually used to make hard cider rather than be baked in pies or eaten raw.
5YYok TIL it was proposed that the Bureau of Land Management cut all funding for the care of wild American mustang herds, and instead allow them to be sold to horse meat dealers who supply Canadian and Mexican slaughterhouses.
VBEbB TIL Once a Finnish farmer plowed up and accidentally cut the cable which connected Moscow to Washington, famously known as the "Red Telephone", put in place after the Cuban Missile Crisis out of the necessity of a quick, clear, and direct communication line between the two superpowers.
Oo97L TIL Nearly 700 million people get a mosquito-borne illness each year. 19 diseases are transmitted by mosquitoes include Malaria, Dengue, West Nile virus, Keystone virus, Rift Valley fever, La Crosse encephalitis, Chikungunya, Zika fever, etc. Doctors can typically identify a mosquito bite by sight.
GYgAQ TIL that right before WW2, the US created the "Logan Bar," a chocolate bar that deliberately tasted "a little better than a boiled potato" as an emergency ration to prevent soldiers from snacking on it outside of emergency situations.