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TIL that the island of Malta was awarded the George Cross by King George the 6th during WW2 for the people of Malta displaying heroism and devotion during a siege on the island by the Axis powers. The medal to this day is incorporated in Malta's national flag.

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1RG4 TIL Kim Jong-il had his agricultural minister executed by firing squad due to the North Korean famine, and when the famine got worse he had men dig up his body and posthumously execute him by firing squad.
ojL8 TIL that in 1971, on the day before Bangladesh officially won its Liberation War, Pakistani soldiers kidnapped the brightest Bengali intellectuals–writers, philosophers, historians, mathematicians, physicists, poets–and slaughtered them in the middle of the night.
yQ78a TIL, authors will write themselves into their own stories for various purposes. Stephen King wrote himself into the Dark Tower series after a near-fatal accident. (Stephen King in the book also suffers the same accident)
8eQ1G TIL Poltergeist, which came out in 1982, was rated PG. This is despite not just the movie fitting perfectly into the horror genre, but also many adult themes including the smoking of marijuana and a deep dive into the occult.
JjV TIL One of Hawaii’s five active volcanoes, Kilauea, has been continuously spewing lava since 1983. It is the longest-lived volcanic eruption anywhere on Earth.