› added 12 years ago

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TIL in 2009 a five-year-old girl who spent her entire life locked in a room with cats and dogs, and no heat, water, or sewage system was found. She could not speak Russian, would jump at the door and bark as caretakers left, and had “clear attributes of an animal”.

d8Anj TIL about Ariana Austin, an American woman who became an African princess in Oct. 2017. She married Yoel Makonnen, grandson of the last Emperor of Ethiopia & direct descendant of King Solomon & the Queen of Sheba. Prince Yoel, who met Ariana at a club in DC, initially kept his royal status a secret.
M8OK TIL that when the Nazi Party held its first book burnings, one of the works destroyed was an 1821 play by Heinrich Heine containing the famous phrase “Where they burn books, they will also in the end burn people.”
JY7xV TIL that after Pearl Harbor three men were trapped deep in the USS West Virginia for 16 days which they marked on the wall of the storeroom they had found shelter in. Soldiers were unable to reach them and no one wanted guard duty near the ship due to the incessant banging of the trapped survivors.
lo9Dr TIL how Santa Barbara California got its name. On December 4, 1602, Spanish explorer Sebastian Vizcaino sailed through the Santa Barbara Channel, which he named in honor of St. Barbara’s Feast Day. It wasn’t until 1782 that the town of Santa Barbara received its name.
PYodL TIL on the evening of July 16, 1962, President John F. Kennedy joked he wanted to smoke cannabis; so his mistress later brought him six joints to the White House. After three joints he felt no effects, but then closed his eyes and refused a fourth. "Suppose the Russians did something now," he said.