› added 11 years ago

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TIL Nathaniel Bedford Forrest, the civil war general involved in the early Ku Klux Klan, had a total of 29 horses shot out from under him during the war. He himself was shot four times, and he defeated over 30 Union soldiers in hand-to-hand combat.

5Nkk TIL that a single Finnish man hid in the Finland forests during WW2 and killed over 500 Soviets in less than 100 days. He was nicknamed “White Death” by the Soviets and they focused missions entirely on him.
66JY TIL in 1969, Porsche developed a successor to the VW Beetle, the EA 266, which had a 1.6l 100hp mid-engine (strongest Beetle at the time: 54hp) and went up to 118mph. The VW board of directors was horrified - they wanted it to be sporty, but cheap and not a sports car - and it was never produced.
OG51R TIL that during annular and solar eclipses, Navajo people as part of sacred traditions, don't look at the sun. Some Navajo even fast, not sleep and not do any activities for several hours after the eclipse. During the recent annular eclipse, Monument Valley was also closed to the public for a day.
oRmlE TIL that the term “missionary position” was likely invented by sexologist Alfred Kinsey and based on a misunderstanding of an earlier book. Regardless, the term has since been adopted into French, German, Spanish, and Dutch
7rZ9b TIL the Notre Dame Cathedral was left to ruin until it was restored in the 19th century, and the restoration was Eugène Viollet-le-Duc's reimagining of what a Middle-Age Cathedral may have looked like.