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TIL Sarah Rector Became The ‘Richest Black Girl In America’ In The Early 20th Century By the time she turned 18, Sarah Rector's net worth was estimated at over $1 million — about $28 million today. And it all came from undesirable land that the federal government gave her.

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54vp TIL the Australian Night Parrot is the most elusive and mysterious bird in the world - only three people have had a confirmed sighting in over a century.
mxQyM TIL because pendulum clocks are unreliable at sea, the first attempt at a marine chronometer was undertaken in 1673 utilizing a balance wheel and spring for regulation instead of a pendulum. This opened the way for the first modern pocket watches and wristwatches.
waBM TIL advocating removal of the monarchy in the UK is officially punishable by life imprisonment.
epQLg TIL In 2019, a chess player was sentenced to 6 months in prison for cheating in a chess Olympiad in France.
wLX9P A new study published February 15 in the Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society finds that the Andromeda galaxy is actually around the same size as our own galaxy. Scientists previously thought Andromeda was about two to three times the size of the Milky Way, and that it would one day swallow us up in a galactic smashup billions of years away. But researchers using a technique to measure “the speed required to escape a galaxy” have figured out why Andromeda is smaller than research has suggested, according to the International Centre for Radio Astronomy Research (ICRAR). This could seriously change the outcome of that eventual merger.