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October 11, 2013

Strange But True!

Q. When hunger turns truly horrifying, how bad can things get?

A. According to written accounts of the “starving time” winter of 1609-1610 in colonial Jamestown, Virginia, sickness and food shortages got so bad that the settlers became desperate, eating horses, dogs, rats, snakes and even boiled boots, says Bruce Bower in Science News magazine. As a last resort, human corpses were consumed. The settlement was nearly wiped out, with only 60 of the 300 inhabitants surviving.


 
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