› added 6 months ago

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TIL of Thomas Fuller, an enslaved African and mental calculator. When asked how many seconds a man has lived in 70 years 17 days & 12 hours, he replied 2,210,500,800. When told he was wrong, Fuller said "massa, you forget de leap year", which was correct once the seconds of the leap years were added

jlNn TIL that D-Day Fighting Was So Intense That 4% Of Normandy’s Beach Is Still Shrapnel
M7V7A TIL about Sarah Josepha Hale. She wrote the poem "Mary had a Little Lamb" and was editor of the most influential women's magazine of the time. Helping to found Vassar College. Over the course of 17 years she wrote five different presidents urging them to make Thanksgiving a national holiday.
6A5X TIL that ace Hungarian shooter Károly Takács shattered his right hand in an accident, started practicing with his left hand, won national championship only months later, and still later two Olympic golds
KY05J TIL about the Faʻafafine people. They are people who identify themselves as having a third gender or non-binary role in Samoa, American Samoa and the Samoan diaspora. A recognised gender identity/gender role in traditional Samoan society, they are an integral part of Samoan culture
e0d1n TIL in 1744, two Scottish Presbyterian ministers made a plan to have fellow ministers pay a small amount a year into a fund, which would be used to take care of their widows if ministers died. It became the blueprint for modern insurance, and their fund, Scottish Widows, is now worth billions.