› added 6 years ago

97

TIL that by the end of the Napoleonic Wars, France was conscripting men shorter than five feet (1.5 m) tall.

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xVnXB TIL, French Train Driver Andre Tanguy stayed in his seat as an approaching runaway train sped towards him at the platform. He continually warned his own passengers to evacuate the train/platform until he was killed.
JeWQ TIL a father and young son were kidnapped and brought to a construction site where the kidnappers cut the father’s throat from ear to ear, shot the son 3 times, then the kidnappers buried them. The father escaped, walked ¼ mile, and flagged down a police officer. He survived. The son did not.
D1vLV TIL that in 2016 Belgian cyclist Femke Van den Driessche was discovered to have a hidden motor in her bicycle, the first proven instance of "Mechanical Doping"
v1pb8 TIL Over 140 Polish pilots flew in the British Air Force during the Battle of Britain, making them the largest non-British nationality in the force. 2nd was New Zealand, and 3rd was Canada. Nearly a quarter of the pilots that fought for the RAF and RN in the Battle of Britain were not British.
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