› added 4 years ago

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TIL After English, Latin is the most common language spoken by American Presidents, with 12 fluent presidents. Next is Greek with 7, French with 6, and German with 4. Also atleast one American president has been fluent in Dutch, Italian, Spanish, and Hebrew.

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0wy5j TIL Sardinians split off from mainland Europeans about 4300-7000 years ago and have remained largely isolated genetically. They're the closest proxy to the Early European farmers who migrated all over Europe from Anatolia, introduced agriculture, and mostly replaced the European hunter-gatherers
8lRV TIL the president of Algeria in 1992 was assassinated during a speech, his last words being “Look at those developed countries that are way ahead of us, why? they are ahead of us because of science, but the Islamic countries…”
78JwM TIL about Jawhar al-Siqilli, an Italian sodlier-slave in Fatimid hands who gained his freedom after 40 years of slavery and worked his way up to becoming the viceroy of Egypt, there he founded the city of Cairo and the al-Azhar university, the oldest university in the world.
xVLR1 TIL: That the original "Snake Oil Salesman" wasn't convicted of selling snake oil, he was convicted of selling FAKE snake oil. Oil from Chinese Water Snakes was considered a legit medicine at the time, but Clark Stanley was convicted in 1917 of selling fake snake oil.
AOw4 TIL of the “Night-Witches,” a Russian regiment of all-female aviators during WWII. Despite only flying slow, obsolete planes, the regiment is said to have dropped over 3,000 tons of bombs and each pilot to have flown over 1,000 missions.