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TIL in 1918 a carrier pigeon saved 194 American soldiers by delivering a message to nearby support despite having been blinded in one eye, shot through the breast, covered in blood, and with a leg hanging on by just a tendon.

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69XKw TIL about Ota Benga, an indigenous Mbuti who was featured at a 1904 human zoo (Louisiana Purchase Exposition). There he was kept, caged, with an orangutan as an attempt to ridicule Darwinism. He was given a bow and arrow so as to "enhance the primitive image".
xVLVo TIL that Pythagoras cannot have been the first to discover the Pythagorean theorem because it was known and used by the Babylonians over a millennium before he was born. Classical historians dispute whether he himself ever actually made any significant contributions to the field of mathematics.
XEAyE TIL that in 2014 the flavor of anti freeze was finally changed so that people and pets would be less likely to consume it accidentally and die.
La6P TIL: The region that is now Pakistan shifted from Buddhism and Hinduism to Islam, largely due to mass forced conversions and persecution.
QN4Rp TIL Tolkien assisted on the Oxford Dictionary's first edition, focused on 'W' words waggle to warlock. He "learned more in those two years than in any other"; and certain etymologies continued to puzzle him for years, with many pages of notes written later on 'walrus' for a lecture at Leeds