› added 4 years ago

68

TIL one of the provisions of the earliest English statute is to define what it means to be a bastard.

Read more wikipedia.org

via reddit.com

ZpWdp TIL John Paul Jones, famous naval officer of the American Revolutionary War, was born in Arbigland, Kirkcudbrightshire, Scotland, and fled the country to avoid arrest after killing a mutinous subordinate. He later killed another mutinous crew member in Tobago, and 18 months later, was in Virginia.
Zyr4 TIL serial killer Carl Panzram would rape his male victims not because he was homosexual but because he wanted to establish dominance over them.
nyLY TIL that when Charlie Chaplin received his honorary Oscar, he received a 12-minute standing ovation - the longest in Oscar history.
P1AXw TIL that sidereal time is different from solar time, so in a typical "year" (ignoring leap year complications) where sun rises 365 times, the Earth has actually done 366 rotations around its axis
W7BvN TIL that The Gambia and Tobago were colonised by the Duchy of Courland and Semigallia - now part of Latvia. Perhaps not surprisingly, the Latvian Duchy was unable to hold on to its colonial possessions for very long.