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TIL of Ingeborg Rapoport. In 2015, 74 years after being denied her Ph.D by the Nazis for being Jewish, she successfully defended her dissertation and received her doctorate from the University of Hamburg at the age of 102, making her the oldest person ever to receive one.

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DQdZj TIL about Albert Severin Roche, a distinguished French soldier who was found sleeping during duty and sentenced to death for it. A messenger arrived right before his execution and told the true story: Albert had crawled 10 hours under fire to rescue his captain and then collapsed from exhaustion.
1beO TIL baseball catcher Dave Bresnahan threw a potato to deceive a baserunner into being tagged by the ball. The league banned him but fan-support forced the club to retire his number. At his retirement ceremony he said “Gehrig played 2130 games & hit 340; all I had to do was bat .140 & throw a potato”
Y7PmW TIL that in 1947 the town of Holt, Missouri (population 471) experienced the greatest 1 hour rainfall total ever observed worldwide: 12 inches of rain fell in just 42 minutes.
1680X TIL that at the start of WW1 famous Serbian General Radomir Putnik was in enemy territory. The Austro-Hungarian Emperor granted him safe passage to Serbia so that he could take charge of the Serbian Army. He was then able to successfully stop the Austro-Hungarian invasion of Serbia.
x6BB5 TIL that the Praetorian Guard auctioned off the throne of the Roman Empire to the highest bidder.