› added 7 years ago

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TIL that the Roman Empire didn't fall until the year 1453. Whilst Rome fell in 476, the Eastern Roman Empire- also known as Byzantium- survived for another thousand years. This means that Joan of Arc, the Spanish Inquisition, and Glasgow University all existed at the same time as the Roman Empire.

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W7wgB 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."
4aR5 TIL The human tongue is made of 8 different muscles, 4 of which (called the intrinsic muscles) are not even connected to bone.
BKBk TIL in 1910 a group of students from Cambridge darkened their skin, donned turbans, and presented themselves to the British Royal Navy as ambassadors from Abyssinia. They conducted an inspection of the fleet, bestowed honors upon British officers, and spoke in a Latin/Greek gibberish.
160k8 TIL of Kurt Gerstein, a Nazi officer who tried to alert the world of the Holocaust while it was happening by sending detailed reports to Swedish, Swiss, Dutch and Catholic officials. These were largely ineffective and he died by suicide in 1945
XEZkX TIL The craze for collecting toy soldiers began with the French in the 18th century. When Napoleon Bonaparte planned his military campaigns, he used models made by Lucotte, a toy soldier maker, to show the positions of his armies. One day he handed a few of the figures over to his son to play with.