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TIL that a higher percentage of free blacks owned slaves (28%) than free whites (1.4%).

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rRl1d TIL King Leopold II of Belgium turned the Congo into one massive slave plantation that resulted in an estimated 10,000,000 deaths, with historians comparing him to Hitler and Stalin.
JYVol TIL: Éamon De Valera, leader of the Irish Free State negotiated the return of three "Treaty" Ports, conceded to Britain in 1921, under the oral agreement that if war were to come, Britain would have access to them. When war came, De Valera denied Britain access to the Ports under Irish neutrality
VgLB TIL: When Spirited Away won the Academy Award for Animation, Hayo Miyazaki personally chose not to attend the show because he “didn’t want to visit a country that was bombing Iraq”
Ma18 TIL when F. Scott Fitzgerald died, he thought he was a failure, and his work forever forgotten. His novel, The Great Gatsby, was reviewed poorly and had only sold 20,000 copies. It’s now considered the greatest novel in American history, and sells over 500,000 copies per year.
0waw5 TIL a 'barrel' of crude oil is not today's standard 200L/55G barrel of commerce, but was originally the 40 gallon whiskey barrel before settling on, in 1866, the 42 gallon (159L) wine tierce established by English King Richard III in 1485, which we still use today