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TIL: Stalin was actually warned about the Nazi invasion, 'Barbarossa', weeks before it actually happened. Refusing to believe the Nazis had broken the Molotov–Ribbentrop Pact of 1939, dismissing the reports of war as British provocations. More than 800,000 Soviets were killed, 6 million captured.

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N7lJP TIL about the Great Stork Derby, a contest held by a Toronto financier and practical joker which bequeathed the residue of his significant estate to the woman in Toronto who could produce the most children in the decade following his death. Two women won and were each given $1.91m in today's dollars
N7oO8 TIL that Scheherazade, the storyteller from One Thousand and One Nights tells her stories (Aladdin, Sinbad, ...) to the monarch so that he would stop marrying and killing a new virgin every day after his first wife betrayed him. He had already killed 1001 women when they met.
WEE9 TIL that of the 100+ people to die in the building of the Hoover Dam, the first and last to perish were a father and son who plummeted to their death 13 years to the day apart.
PYnpG TIL to reconstruct the Great Pyramid of Giza today, it would require about $5 billion, 5 years, 1,500 to 2,000 workers, and 2.3 million stones weighing 3 tons each, according to Jean-Pierre Houdin, a French architect who has helped create a virtual model of the ancient construction system.
5YB6n TIL galaxies can have "satellite galaxies" that orbit them like planets orbit stars. The Milky Way has about 50 satellite galaxies.