› added 6 years ago

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TIL that even though he owned slaves in the past, Benjamin Franklin became more opposed to slavery later in his life. Eventually becoming the president of an abolitionist society, he even included a provision in his will that required his child to free her slave in order to gain his inheritance.

nepld TIL that 20 years before the first woman was democratically elected in 1980 as president of a country (namedly Iceland), stateswoman Sirimavo Bandaranaike of Ceylon (present-day Sri Lanka) was elected as prime minister, when she led her party to victory at the 1960 general election.
bMoa TIL that in 1976, Margaret Hamilton reprised her role as the Wicked Witch of the West on an episode of Sesame Street. Initial screenings revealed that children were “exceptionally attentive” during scenes with the witch. The episode has never been re-run, and no known existing copies exist today.
E15Aw TIL the owner of Appommatox house fled there after First Manassas in order to escape the ravages of war...only to have the war end there thus being at the start and the end of the US Civil War.
wLbl8 TIL of Ignác Trebitsch, an Orthodox Jew con artist who spent time as a Protestant missionary, Anglican priest, British MP, German double-agent, Nazi collaborator, and Buddhist abbot.
MeLJ7 TIL of Inverted Totalitarianism. Not found in a demagogue but in the faceless anonymity of the corporate state. It pays outward fealty to the facade of electoral politics, the Constitution, freedom of the press etc., but it has seized all of the mechanisms of power rendering the citizen impotent.