› added 4 years ago

81

TIL that despite leading the Confederate attack that started the American Civil War, P. G. T. Beauregard later became an advocate for black civil rights and suffrage.

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LkO8Z TIL Ulysses S. Grant's autobiography was sold by 10,000 agents, many of whom were former Union soldiers who canvassed the northern states while wearing their old uniforms. It was a method devised by Mark Twain, the publisher. It made a fortune for Grant's widow, who received a 75% royalty.
vPXJ8 TIL Sudan has more pyramids than Egypt. After being destroyed and looted, the ones left are at risk of disappearing due to shifting desert sands. Theres a multi-billion dollar project to plant a line of trees across the entire African continent to create ground stability and stop the desert spread.
4d65 TIL that Will Smith doesn’t use profanity in his lyrics because his grandmother wrote to him “intelligent people do not use these words to express themselves”
gR5b TIL the Italian words widely used in New Jersey differ greatly from mainstream Italian today not because of bad “copying” but because the words came from people speaking an Italian dialect that subsequently died out in Italy
R745w TIL Tim Wong made the first and only successful attempt at singlehandedly repopulating the extremely rare pipevine swallowtail butterfly in San Francisco. In seven years, he cultivated more than 200 pipevine plants (sole food source) and donates thousands of caterpillars to the Botanical Gardens.