› added 7 years ago

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TIL In 1953, an Anglican priest founded the Samaritans, the world’s first crisis suicide hotline. He was inspired to do so years previously after serving the funeral of a 14 year old girl who committed suicide because she had begun to menstruate & feared that she had a sexually transmitted disease.

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Me1n7 TIL bananas are facing extinction due to a fungal disease
WgOX TIL that the Stasi(East German Secret Police) used a psychological technique called Zersetzung, which involved things like breaking into a targets house and rearranging things, calling in the middle of the night, and sending dildos.
QJ6Nd TIL about "wateraid.org": a charity organization that is "determined to make clean water, reliable toilets and good hygiene normal for everyone, everywhere within a generation". In 2018-19, they brought 206,000 schools clean water, 182,000 schools decent toilets, and 695,000 schools good hygiene.
KYJE4 TIL South Korea has the fourth highest suicide rate, in part due to elderly isolation.
BrWwK TIL The Toba Super-eruption was a supervolcanic eruption that occurred 75,000 years ago. It has been suggested this caused a volcanic winter lasting 6-10 years. The genetic bottleneck theory says the world population declined to 1,000-10,000 breeding pairs which we are all descended from.