› added 11 years ago

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TIL when Colonel Robert Gould Shaw, commander of the all-black 54th Regiment during the American Civil War, died at Fort Wagner, he was stripped and buried with his men as an insult. His father, however, proclaimed that he was proud to know that he rests with his brave and devoted soldiers.

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V8rZ TIL that HP Lovecraft wrote nearly 100,000 letters in his lifetime, the second most number of letters written by anyone in recorded history; the first was French writer Voltaire. Lovecraft said, “I write [letters] exactly as easily and as rapidly as I would utter the same topics in conversation.”
LQpDV TIL that Deborah Harkness, author of A Discovery of Witches (a novel about a scholar who finds a lost book of magic at Oxford), actually found Aldaraia, a long lost 16th century treatise on magic in Oxford’s library.
epWd5 TIL Dalmatians became associated with firehouses in the 18th and 19th centuries because of their ability to protect firefighting horses, fend off street dogs, clear the way with barking, and guard the equipment.
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MGdm TIL the United States has the 2nd lowest voter turnout among OECD nations. Only Korea has a lower turnout rate.