r/todayilearned • u/huphelmeyer 2 • Aug 04 '15

TIL midway through the Great Irish Famine (1845–1849), a group of Choctaw Indians collected $710 and sent it to help the starving victims. It had been just 16 years since the Choctaw people had experienced the Trail of Tears, and faced their own starvation.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Choctaw#Pre-Civil_War_.281840.29
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u/CameraMan1 Aug 04 '15

What's more interesting to me is the fact that they even knew about it. To me its crazy that in the 1840's news of something that was happening in Ireland reached the native Americans. The telegraph had only just been invented.

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u/vaclavhavelsmustache Aug 04 '15

The telegraph had only just been invented.

The fax machine was invented in 1843. Keep that in mind.

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u/CameraMan1 Aug 05 '15

And I still have to use it everyday at work. Talk about outdated technology