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TIL in the year 774, the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle recorded a “red crucifix” in the sky. Tree rings dated from that year all over the world show a spike in Carbon-14 levels. It is believed that the event was caused by a very strong solar flare, perhaps the strongest ever known

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NQk1 TIL: Yasuke, a 16th century African who traveled to Japan as a slave, caused such a sensation that a powerful warlord wished to see him. He thought his black skin was paint and ordered it to be scrubbed. However, they became friends and Yasuke was later given the prestigious rank of Samurai.
9w8kD TIL a large number of the people we see fired in the film 'Up in the Air' (2009) are not actors, but real people who were recently laid off. They were instructed to respond as they did when they were laid off, or use the opportunity to say what they wished they had.
dD6BB TIL that Abraham Lincoln founded the US Secret Service hours before being assassinated
l7oP7 TIL that there is a Disney Professor of Archaeology at the University of Cambridge. The professorship is named after the antiquarian John Disney, who endowed the position in 1851.
p80be TIL about Placobdelloides jaegerskioeldi; a leech known as the Hippo Butt Leech who spends its life attached to the rectums of hippos