› added 8 years ago

170

TIL a Poor and Illiterate Irishman called George Thomas travelled to India, worked as a mercenary for Indian Kings and eventually became a King himself, ruling over his own kingdom for a number of years in the districts of Rohtak and Hisar

M7Dj7 TIL Paraguay has a province named after former US President Rutherford B. Hayes. This is because Hayes arbitrated a large border dispute in 1878, granting the vast majority of the disputed land to Paraguay. Despite being mostly unknown in the US, Hayes is considered one of Paraguay's heroes.
yndV TIL in WWII, the Japanese bombed Saskatchewan, Canada. The only damage was a fence.
nW97B TIL the first digital computer, ENIAC, was programmed by six women in the 1940s. Fran Bilas, Betty Jennings, Ruth Lichterman, Kay McNulty, Betty Snyder, and Marlyn Wescoff's contributions were overlooked for decades. Their pioneering work laid the foundation for modern computing.
6EKo8 TIL for 26 years, German feminists Ottilie Assing and African-American Abolitionist Frederick Douglass were believed to be having an affair. I’m August 1884, after learning Douglass remarried to Helen Pitts, Assing killed herself by swallowing cyanide in a public park in Paris.
P1Wge TIL: Seiji Yoshida WW2 memoir, "My War Crimes" detailing his many war crimes against comfort women became a hit and even used by George Hicks, the NYT, etc. It even spread across Korea. However, after his death, his son revealed he made up his war crimes for money as he was poor after the war.