› added 6 years ago

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TIL that in 1943, Canada declared the maternity ward of Ottawa Civic Hospital extraterritorial. This was done so that the newborn Princess Margriet of the Netherlands would derive her Dutch citizenship from her mother. The royal family had fled to Canada three years prior due to the Nazi occupation.

kJ7ym TIL during WW2, in order to prevent the Nazi’s from turning it into a base for U-Boats, The British invaded Iceland. There was only one casualty, a Royal Marine who committed suicide en route
N7WGN Today I Learned that there will be a Red Nova in our skies in 2022. This will be the first Nova we can see with the naked eye in decades.
X0KG6 TIL that Duran Duran was chosen to do the theme song for James Bond film A View to a Kill (1985) after bassist John Taylor drunkenly asked producer Albert Broccoli, "When are you going to get someone decent to do one of your theme songs?"
R5a1a TIL co-founder of the band ABBA, Anni-Frid Lyngstad, was born from the union between a Norwegian mother and Nazi German father for a program where the Nazis tried to increase the Aryan population. Children such as her were open to receive nicknames such as “SS bastard”, “rat,” or “Nazi child.”
pYwjN TIL when it was discovered in 1963 that the Winchester manuscript of Le Morte d'Arthur was indeed Thomas Malory's, John Steinbeck caught wind of it and decided to translate it into modern English. Ultimately he abandoned the project, but what remained was published after his death.