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TIL Voltaire's joke that the Holy Roman Empire (HRE) was "neither holy, nor Roman, nor an empire" was mostly true. The center of the Church at the time was actually the Vatican, the HRE's people were mostly Germanic and not Roman, and the nation was never truly unified at any point in its history.

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Zpp7G TIL Described as the first iced coffee, the Mazagran was named for the beverage that French colonial troops consumed during the 1840 siege of the Mazagran fortress in Algeria. Troops prepared the coffee syrup with water in the absence of milk or brandy and drank it cold to counter the heat.
KOl0R TIL that Burmese pythons have overrun the Florida Everglades partly as a result of Hurricane Andrew destroying a breeding facility in 1992, which released hundreds of snakes.
MpjV TIL Margaret Thompson was the first woman to win an Olympic medal in a shooting sport (silver) in 1976 after tying with the gold medal winner. When the Olympic committee refused a shootoff, the gold medalist pulled Thompson onto the gold medal platform with him.
l7KBN TIL in 1791 at the Battle of Wabash, approximately one-quarter of the entire U.S. Army was destroyed in one day by Native American forces.
X0OmP TIL that the British once tried to destroy an entire island after WW2 because they didn't want it to be used as a fleet base for the Germans. This was done in "Operation Big Bang" where they detonated 6700 tonnes of explosives, which is considered one of the largest single explosive detonation.