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TIL Mikhail Gorbachev was unable to be present on the occasion of his award of the Nobel Peace Prize in Oslo, 1990 but had his First Deputy Foreign Minister speak instead. His speech emphasized perestroika for USSR and mankind

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JYg1v TIL in 1977, Argentina flew a pregnant woman to their military base in Antarctica so she could have first baby to ever be born on the continent. In doing so, the Argentine government believed this would give them an undisputable claim on the land, but the claim is not recognized internationally.
4WBw TIL Room 101, the torture chamber in George Orwell’s 1984, was named after a meeting room at the BBC where Orwell would have to sit through tortuously boring meetings.
P9Qw TIL Anneliese Michel is the allegedly possessed woman whom Emily Rose is based on. Her parents and two priests forced her through 67 exorcism rites resulting in her rupturing knees, dehydration and starvation. The parents and priests were therefore convicted of manslaughter.
6EWM7 TIL in addition to the protests & death threats Ruby Bridges had to face as the first black kid in a white school, her father lost his job, the local grocery store stopped serving the family, & her sharecropper grandparents were turned off their land.
neKJ7 TIL the Herbert Hoover spoke fluent Chinese.