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TIL of Armand Gagné, a peasant boy who was adopted by Marie Antoinette. After her carriage almost ran over the 5-year-old, she became so delighted with his appearance that she took him with her. The boy did not want to go and wished to stay with his family but she forcibly adopted him anyway.

DQpBr TIL: They Assyrians, of Assyrian Empire fame, founders of Akkad and Sumer, still exist. They speak one of the oldest continuously spoken and written languages and one of the oldest alphabetically written languages in the world.
RAo8 TIL Alan Alda is the only actor to appear in all 251 episodes of the long-running series MAS*H. He commuted from Los Angeles to his home in New Jersey, where his wife and daughters lived, every weekend for the 11-year-run of the show, because he didn’t know how long the show would last.
4XMR6 TIL that when William III invaded England in 1688, he departed the Netherlands on November 11 and landed in England 4 days later on November 5. At the time England used a calendar that was 11 days behind most of Europe.
78NmO TIL For centuries, Borzoi dogs could not be purchased but only given as gifts from the Tsar. The breed was almost rendered extinct after the Russian Revolution, as the communists associated the breed with the upper classes and killed Borzoi dogs in large numbers.
eEgL TIL that in 1998 CNN ran a false news report, accusing American soldiers of using sarin gas in a rescue mission titled, “Operation Tailwind” during the Vietnam War. The report would later go on to become the basis of a storyline in HBO’s The Newsroom.