› added 10 years ago

85

TIL Thomas-Alexandre Dumas the father of novelist Alexandre Dumas. Was a general in Revolutionary France and the highest-ranking person of color of all time in a European army. He was the first person of color in the French military to become general-in-chief of a French army

Read more wikipedia.org

via reddit.com

nwlG TIL that the salvation army is not a charity. They are an Evangelical business that spent thousands of dollars of donated money to fight gay rights last year. In fact, lots of donated money goes to promoting their beliefs, not charity.
Y7YaZ TIL that there is a unit of time called the Planck. It is 1.35 x 10^-43 seconds in length. There are more of them in one second than in all the seconds in time since the Big Bang.
lo11a TIL Australians don't traditionally celebrate Halloween, and its increasing popularity there is often considered to be an example of encroaching American cultural imperialism, despite it being a millennia-old Celtic European holiday
e0YO4 TIL For his role in the Oklahoma City Bombing (1995), Terry Nichols was sentenced to 161 life sentences plus 9300 years, without parole. His sentence is declared as the longest officially confirmed sentence ever handed down in the world.
kg6B TIL a programmer at a game company got so tired of producers asking for changes just because they felt they had to contribute, that he animated a flapping duck into the game “Battle Chess”. When the producer reviewed the animations, he said, “That looks great. Just one thing: get rid of the duck.”