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TIL the Royal Navy executed an admiral for not trying hard enough, despite being brave and loyal. This inspired Voltaire’s quip “it is good to kill an admiral from time to time, in order to encourage the others”.

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NpdP TIL: Dorothy Kilgallen died under mysterious circumstances in 1965. She started reporting on UFOs in the 50’s, was extremely critical of the US government, and interviewed Jack Ruby in private, claiming to be “about to blow the JFK case sky high.”
Rnw4 TIL the airspeed velocity of an unladen european swallow is 24 mph, or 40 km/h
GA71N TIL in July 2014, former military leader of Panama, Manuel Noriega, filed a lawsuit against Activision for allegedly portraying him in Call of Duty: Black Ops II for depicting him and using his name without his consent. The lawsuit was dismissed on October 28, 2014.
p8KMb TIL that the Northern Great Plains was home to many fortified Native American towns, beginning in the 800s and existing all the way until the 1880s. These towns had over a thousand residents and a plaza centric layout. These were sedentary towns where people lived year-round.
ojL8 TIL that in 1971, on the day before Bangladesh officially won its Liberation War, Pakistani soldiers kidnapped the brightest Bengali intellectuals–writers, philosophers, historians, mathematicians, physicists, poets–and slaughtered them in the middle of the night.