› added 6 years ago

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TIL about Yasuke, a former Mozambique Slave turned Samurai during the Japanese Hegemony and unification wars. He was well respected by the Japanese and was considered to have the strength of ten men, and was one Oda Nobunaga's most trusted warriors.

0xGy TIL in 1947 there was an explosion in Texas City so large, it instantly killed the entire fire dept, knocked airplanes out of the sky, and people eleven miles away fell down.
0yYL TIL in 1975 a county clerk in Colorado issued a same-sex marriage license, finding no law that forbade it. When a man came to her office to marry his horse in protest, she determined the 8-year-old horse was too young to get married without parental consent and refused the license.
oBKpE TIL the Japanese Imperial Family has a staff of more than 1,000 people (47 servants per royal). 30 gardeners, 25 chefs, 40 chauffeurs as well as 78 builders, plumbers and electricians. The Emperor has four doctors on standby 24 hours a day, five men manage his wardrobe and 11 assists in Shinto rites
vpy8 TIL the French, under Napoleon III, tried taking over Mexico to use it as a base to help the Confederate States win the Civil War. They failed and a year later Mexico celebrated “Cinco de Mayo” for the first time.
GY1bj TIL There was a speech drafted in case the Apollo 11 astronauts were stranded on the moon. “For every human being who looks up at the moon in the nights to come will know that there is some corner of another world that is forever mankind.”