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TIL George Washington Custis Lee, the son of Confederate general Robert E. Lee successfully sued the government for its confiscation of Arlington and was paid 150,000 dollars. His lawyer was Robert Todd Lincoln the only surviving child of Abraham Lincoln.

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pkQ4 TIL that when he was in hiding, Salman Rushdie immersed himself in Super Mario World, and joked that the best way to liberate Iran was to drop Nintendo consoles from the sky
rB8w TIL that Josip Broz Tito after surviving assassination attempts wrote to Stalin: “Stop sending people to kill me. We’ve already captured five of them, one of them with a bomb and another with a rifle … If you don’t stop sending killers, I’ll send one to Moscow, and I won’t have to send a second.”
B5yx TIL that until the 17th century most scientists believed that the speed of light was infinite. It was only in 1676 that Ole Rømer and Giovanni Cassini made the first measurement of the velocity of light (just 27% off the real value) by observing the orbits of the moons of Jupiter.
RRM6 TIL in 1740, a 16-Year-Old English Boy, having been convicted of rape and murder, was hanged by the neck for 20 minutes. After being cut down, his body was sent to be dissected when he began to show signs of life. After making a full recovery, his sentence was commuted to exile.
Xn7D TIL that dolphins can tolerate and recover from extreme injuries like shark bites. The healing process is very rapid - even very deep wounds wont cause a dolphin to bleed to death. Gaping wounds heal in a way that restores the animal’s natural body shape. Infection of large wounds is also very rare