› added 1 year ago

38

TIL about Albert Severin Roche, a distinguished French soldier who was found sleeping during duty and sentenced to death for it. A messenger arrived right before his execution and told the true story: Albert had crawled 10 hours under fire to rescue his captain and then collapsed from exhaustion.

Read more wikipedia.org

via reddit.com

Bg6Dy TIL that in a Spanish town, 700 residents are descendants of 17th-century samurai who settled there after a Japanese embassy returned home. They carry the surname "Japón," which was originally "Hasekura de Japón."
R7Yb8 TIL British suffragettes used toffee hammers to break windows as part of their successful protests for women voting
R7WR9 TIL of the Nepalese Royal Family Massacre. Nine members of the royal family, including the king, were murdered by the crown prince, who then killed himself.
d8YOd TIL that a 1950s and 60s Greenwich Village street poet named Big Brown had an enormous influence on Kerouac and the Beats, Bob Dylan, and proto-Hip Hop with Rudy Ray Moore (Dolemite) and The Last Poets. Dylan referred to his poems as "the best poetry I ever heard".
rRALo TIL that prior to British troops firing on civilians at the Boston Massacre in 1770, they were pelted with oyster shells, ice, stones, sticks, and beaten with clubs by an unruly mob. At the trial, the soldiers were successfully defended by none other than John Adams and all were acquitted of murder.