› added 8 years ago

174

TIL soon after the American revolution, the leader of the Continental Congress asked the Prince of Prussia to become King of the United States

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69dr7 TIL that the name “Sahara” is derived from the Arabic word for “desert”. The Sahara desert is the desert desert.
M7Qem TIL I learned how Champollion cracked the ancient Egyptian hieroglyphic writing. The reason why he succeeded -23 years after the Rosetta Stone discovery- is that he spoke Coptic, and it meant that the sounds written in hieroglyphs made sense to him.
Brlpy TIL Horatio Nelson had a "friendship ceremony" where he exchanged rings with Emma Hamilton, while they were both married to other people
K4lQ TIL one of the most viewed Korean programs of all time is called “Finding Dispersed Families”, where loved ones that were separated after the Korean War found each other through television
ey1k TIL that Stephen Hawking’s wife was given the option to take him off of life support after he was placed in a medically induced coma. She refused, and upon recovering he finished writing ‘A Brief History of Time’