TIL that the largest pumpkin ever grown in the US state of Massachusetts was in 2020, by Charles M. Lieber, a Harvard chemist convicted of not disclosing ties to the Chinese government, as well as not reporting associated income from this work
TIL The massacre of Hungary in 1242 by Subutai (Mongol General) was so brutal that even in 1250, eight years after the Mongols had left, Hungarian King Bela wrote to Pope Innocent IV that Hungary could not withstand another invasion and would have to surrender to the Mongols if they returned.
TIL of a Colonel Richard Meinertzhagen, a WW1 British soldier, spy, intelligence officer, explorer, and naturalist who was a fraud as well as a psychopath and murderer—even killing his own wife when she nearly exposed him for submitting stolen museum birds as his own discoveries.
TIL that the Nazis believed strongly in the myth of Atlantis. Under the guidance of Heinrich Himmler, archeologists spread the idea that Germans were descended from a superior race of Antlanteans.
TIL German was the first language of the majority of households until the 1950s in Schaumburg (Illinois)