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TIL In 1804, President Thomas Jefferson had Pennsylvania Avenue cut through President's Park, separating what would become Lafayette Square from the White House grounds. Lafayette Square has been used as a racetrack, a graveyard, a zoo, a slave market, an encampment for soldiers

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j9ov TIL of Newton Knight, a Southern Unionist who formed the Knight Company, a band of Confederate Army deserters in Jones County, Mississippi which fought a guerrilla war against the CSA. After the Civil War, he married a former slave and fought the KKK leading an otherwise all black regiment.
yVbLa TIL that Able Archer 83 was a war exercise conducted by NATO that panicked the Soviets into thinking they were really being attacked and so nearly launched a nuclear retaliation in response; it is now considered to be the nearest that mankind went into nuclear war since the Cuban Missile Crisis
PYX4g TIL there's a music genre called Bardcore. They take some modern songs, use medieval type instruments and pacing, and sometimes change some of the words to match medieval terminology
6E07 TIL that the Toyota MR2 had to be renamed in France, as the pronunciation of MR2 sounds similar to the French words for “It is shitty”
nWlWG TIL the Battle of Nechtansmere in 685 was one of the most significant in Britain, because it smashed the power of the Angles, allowing the Saxons to dominate to the south, and prevented what became Scotland from being absorbed by the rest of Britain