Y7b0d TIL That the Seige of Kaffa was most likely NOT how the Black Death came to Europe via biological warfare
BgY1e TIL that Captain Leopold McLaglen claimed to be a jujitsu master and trained soldiers for WW1 trench warfare. In fact he was a conman who once posed as his own brother - movie star Victor McLaglen - and ended up involved in a failed Nazi plot to assassinate "Hollywood Jews" including Charlie Chaplin
rNb4M TIL Some animals can’t walk backwards
NXJd6 TIL in the Middle Ages, the Reynard the Fox literary cycle was so popular in France that the word to describe "fox" went from "goupil" to "renard"
l7bla TIL Grand Duchess Elizabeth was the Aunt and Sister-in-Law of Tsar Nicholas II. After her husband's assassination in 1905, she joined a convent and devoted her life to the poor, even selling off her own wedding ring. Despite this, she would be murdered by the Bolsheviks in 1918.
8eOEb TIL in New York City, 111 8th Ave takes over one city block (2.9 mil square ft), it was originally built for the Port Authority of NY and NJ. Google owns the entire building since 2010.
P1DEZ TIL that Charles Guiteau, the man who shot and killed James A. Garfield, dictated an autobiography from prison to the New York Herald and ended it with a personal ad for a "nice Christian lady under 30 years of age."
epblg TIL that in the year 1600 a Basque nun fled the convent, took on a new identity as a boy, and spent the following decades living a life of adventure (military service, general violence, betrothals, etc.) in Spain and Spanish America
VBbYG TIL of the Siege of Caffa which took place in 1343-1344 and was conducted by Jani Beg of the Golden Horde. Facing the dire situation of weakened forces due to the plague and a fortified city, Beg decided to catapult bodies of plague-infected soldiers over the city walls to infect Caffa's inhabitants
X0bMX TIL about Peter Stumpp, an alleged 1500s German serial killer who was accused of being a werewolf. His entire family was brutally tortured to death
OGveL TIL Diana Armstrong, who holds the world record for longest fingernails, 42 ft, vowed to never cut her nails again after her 16 year old daughter passed from an asthma attack. The two had enjoyed doing their manicures together.
69wGY TIL that Bayume Mohamed Husen, a Black German born in East Africa who served in the German army during WWI and later worked as an actor in Nazi propaganda films, was arrested by the Gestapo and died in Sachsenhausen concentration camp in 1944 for violating Nazi racial laws.