› added 9 years ago

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TIL Sal Khan of Khan Academy, an MIT grad was raised by a single immigrant mother who worked odd jobs to support her children.

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via reddit.com

4XPnR TIL that the founder of the Mughal Empire, Babur, founded his massive empire after giving up on his original dreams: the reconquest of his tiny Ferghana homeland from Uzbek invaders. Saddened by a third defeat, Babur went to India to flee the Uzbeks, founding his empire in the process.
ZpMw4 TIL that in 1884, 630 French Foreign Legionnaires fought 12 000 Chinese troops at the battle of Tuyen Quang, and won.
QJQA9 TIL of Arthur Boycott, the man with the longest overdue library book in history. He checked it out in the 1890s and it wasn’t returned until nearly 120 years later in 2016, by his granddaughter
Z4aD TIL The practice of daily shampooing wasn’t a norm in the US until the 1970s and 1980s
kOeXB TIL that Timothy Dexter, an american businessman in the 1800's, managed to build a fortune by embarking on ridicoulous business ventures, such as shipping coal to Newcastle, one of the foremost coal-exporting cities in Britain, which only succeded due to local workes having gone on strike.