› added 9 years ago

369

TIL Santa Clause is the “Patron Saint of Prostitutes”

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9YvLp TIL that the British sent ships and men to the US at the start of WWII to protect us from German U-boats. One ship sank and all 37 men on-board died. Only 4 washed up on shore. A special "British Cemetery" was created and it is leased in perpetuity to England so the men are at rest on British soil
6ELBQ TIL that Benjamin Franklin preferred the turkey as the national bird of the United States
697Jm TIL Boer Commandos / Kommandos of what is now South Africa were civilian units of guerilla militia that ran parallel to British troops & were re-formed, conscripted to, & disbanded several times (last was 2005). Entire families in district command, control of taxes & fighting in rough terrain.
neJ6d TIL of Lorenc Peter Elfred Freuchen was a 6’7” tall walrus-spearing, peg-legged, anti-Semite-clobbering Danish explorer and badass old-school 1900s explorer who escaped certain death by molding his own faeces into a knife and using it to carve through a solid wall of ice.
E1nww TIL that German Reformation leader Martin Luther was extremely antisemitic and advocated forced labor, expulsion, the burning of synagogues, of Jewish schools, and of Jewish books, and even their murder.