› added 10 months ago

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TIL when Queen Margrethe II of Denmark abdicates on Jan 14, it will be the first time Europe hasn't had a Queen Regent since 1833

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BAXD TIL: Seventeen minutes of lost footage from 2001: A Space Odyssey was recovered from a Kansas salt mine
GKGE TIL When asked when he first acknowledged his sexuality, Fry quipped: “I suppose it all began when I came out of the womb. I looked back up at my mother and thought to myself, ‘That’s the last time I’m going up one of those’”
nPo7 TIL that jaywalking is not illegal in the UK, and that while pedestrian crossings are plentiful, they are not compulsory to use. Ultimately, it is seen as the personal responsibility of the individual to make a sound enough judgement to cross safely.
rLx0 TIL in 2011 a Gurkha single-handedly held off 12 Taliban as they attacked his base. Alone on the roof, he fought ‘an onslaught of rocket-propelled grenades and AK-47s’. He fired over 400 rounds, launched 17 grenades and detonated a mine. After his gun failed, he threw his tripod to fend a man off.
xojb TIL Robert E. Lee defended the torture of slaves as something “they must endure,” because “pain was necessary for their instruction.” Lee regularly had mothers sold or rented away from their children, sometimes as punishment. Lee’s slaves said he was the “meanest man we ever saw.”