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TIL: A Civil War General was both commander and quartermaster for his own company, and would send himself requests and even deny and argue with himself out of a sense of propriety

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8a7YL TIL that the International Red Cross visited the Concentration Camp Theresienstadt during WWII and - in a complete failure to recognize that the Nazis faked everything - reported life there being nearly "normal". 33,000 people died in Theresienstadt.
jN1mj TIL the US Senate used the same gavel for 165 years until Richard Nixon cracked it
9YvNM TIL in the 1600s to avoid slavery a group of Africans on St. Vincent Island acquired the customs and language of the Native American group Kalipona so that Europeans would consider them to be native and leave them alone.
X0eQX TIL Sweden and Norway has its own definition of a mile, being 10 kilometers. As a swede i always thought that this was the standard in the whole world except The US.
kOvk5 TIL that despite the name, no centipede has exactly one hundred legs because they always have an odd number of leg pairs