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TIL Sir Jeffrey Hudson, the Court Dwarf of Charles I, challenged a man who insulted him to a duel on horseback. The man thought it was a joke, and showed up to the duel with a squirt gun, instead of a real pistol. Unfortunately, Hudson was quite serious and shot the man in the head, killing him.

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VpVG TIL the samurai’s name in the TV show Samurai Jack is never mentioned. The first people he encounters in the future call him “Jack” as a form of slang, which he adopts as his name, the name his parents gave him is unknown.
R7rG4 TIL about the Hunger Plan developed by Nazi Germany during World War II, which entailed the death by starvation of about 30 millions of "racially inferior" Slavs following the 1941 invasion of the Soviet Union. It led to the starvation of over 4 million citizens of the USSR between 1941-44.
R7E5j TIL that New Mexico was the original Sunshine State, unofficially using the slogan prior to statehood in 1912 and eventually adding it to their state license plates in 1932. However, they never made anything official, and Florida managed to adopt an official resolution and steal the slogan in 1970.
61M8 TIL That child support in Canada is based on past income not current income. People can be ordered by the court to pay more money than they make or have ever made. If Dave Foley returns to Canada he will go to jail because the child support payments are now literally impossible.
0lvN TIL in 1962 the USSR decided to test a 300kt nuclear bomb in space over a populated area, the resulting EMP fused 350 miles of telephone lines, shut down 621 miles of buried power cables and burnt down a power station. The following year they signed & ratified a treaty banning tests in outer space.