› added 4 years ago

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TIL In the 1700's the Mysore Army was using rocket artillery. The weapon was for long distance and against masses of soldiers throughout the Anglo-Mysore Wars. The First Duke of Wellington personally experienced the weapons and the English would adapt them for fighting in the Napoleonic Wars.

5YpAD TIL In 2008 a Japanese bikini model was acquitted of trespass charges because a recreation of the alleged crime showed she couldn't have fit through the access hole because of her 44 inch breasts.
dJZ9 TIL after escaping from slavery, an illiterate Harriet Tubman was spotted by a former master on a train. She decided to pick up a nearby newspaper and pretended to read it. The master ignored the black woman reading because he knew Tubman couldn’t read.
4XaM6 TIL Knights who had pledged allegiance to the feudal host and had land were obliged to give 40 days’ service per year.
nEkb TIL In 1965 at age 90 and with no heirs Jeanne Calment sold her apartment to lawyer André-François Raffray on a contingency contract. Raffray, aged 47 agreed to pay her a monthly sum of 2,500 francs until she died. Raffray ended up paying Calment >$180,000; more than double the apartment’s value.
4j4R TIL that some orthodox Jewish communities have volunteer ambulance services which survive solely on donations. They don’t bill the patient for transporting them to the hospital, have a faster response time than most ambulance companies, and don’t exclusively service Jews.