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TIL in 1795, the French Revolutionary Army captured the 14 warships of the Dutch fleet anchored at the Zuiderzee bay next to Den Helder with a regiment of hussar light cavalry. "A capture of ships by horsemen is an extremely rare feat in military history."

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xGYo TIL in 1983 a preserved head was discovered at a bog in Lindow Moss. Believing the remains to be his former wife, Peter Reyn-Bardt confessed to murdering her in 1960. When testing later found the head was from 250AD, Reyn-Bardt tried to revoke his confession but was still convicted of her murder.
MDjB TIL that some vegans choose not to eat honey because they consider beekeeping to be slavery
woN5P TIL that U.S. President Polk made a deal with exiled Mexican general Santa Anna to lift the American blockade of Mexico so he could return and hand over territory. To the dismay of the Americans, Santa Anna immediately reneged on the deal and took up arms in the Mexican-American War.
wL6pM TIL out of the three different types of lightning, ground to cloud lightning is the rarest, but the most dangerous. The reason why it is called “ground to cloud” is that the flash itself comes up from the ground.
GAym5 TIL Type O Negative's title song "Bloody Kisses", about a woman who committed suicide, it’s a veiled tribute to Peter Steele's 17-year-old cat Venus: "No one wants to hear about a guy who's 6' 8" with long black hair and fangs crying about his f**kin' cat, so I had to make it extremely metaphoric."