› added 6 months ago

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TIL following backlash to the Morgenthau plan for Germany, President Roosevelt claimed "I have not approved anything like that. I am sure I have not. ... I have no recollection of this at all". Upon being read back what he had signed, Roosevelt said he had "no idea how he could have initialed this"

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698LZ TIL about Tarrare, a French spy and Performer who had such an appetite he would eat live cats and puppies, cadavers from morgues and was even suspected of kidnapping and eating a baby. He would also eat from heaps of dung in the street and as a spy, the entire army's rations.
b9L77 TIL the oldest company in the world has been operating since 578 AD
m1VRE TIL Mount Everest is named after Sir George Everest despite him having zero connection to the mountain (he never even saw it) and against his own wishes. He objected to the naming on the grounds that "Everest" could not be easily written in Hindi nor pronounced by the local people.
awZao TIL that Beethoven's 5th became known as the victory symphony because of the allied forces "V for victory" slogan during WW2. After noticing that the first four notes of the symphony sound like the morse code for the letter V, the BBC played that motif on the timpani before every wartime broadcast.
loEer TIL that in 2012 a Hong Kong billionaire Cecil Chao announced to offered $65m to any man able to woo and marry his lesbian daughter Gigi Chao. He later doubled his offer to $130m. After this Gigi said in an open letter that "I think I'll marry a man when he marries a man."