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TIL - During WW1 the UK and Canada had battalions comprised entirely of men between 4'-10" and 5'-3" tall known as the Bantam Battalions.

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Rnp9 TIL In Soviet Russia, prisoners would get tattoos of Lenin & Stalin, because guards weren’t allowed to shoot at images of national leaders.
d8KVZ TIL when George Washington passed away in 1799, the British Royal Navy lowered its flags at half mast. The London Morning Chronicle stated that ‘The whole range of history does not present to our view a character upon which we can dwell with such entire and unmixed admiration’.
p8v8O TIL a documentary TV crew's search for exotic animals off of Australia's coast instead turned up a real-life island castaway
dDKaK TIL that Napoleon married his second wife by proxy and met her for the first time two weeks later. Upon meeting she remarked "you are much better-looking than your portrait."
ANMOg TIL the bomb used in the Oklahoma City bombing took an estimated inflation-adjusted $10 000 to produce