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TIL that French queen Marie Antoinette was offered in 1787 a boy from Senegal as a servant but instead taking him as servant she adopted him as her son and baptized as Jean. During the revolution Jean was separated from the royal family and left by revolutionaries to die on streets at age of 10.

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mBjR TIL of Thomas Mott Osborne, who stamped out corruption as warden of Sing Sing prison. Framed for having sex with prisoners by a crooked banker, after his acquittal the inmates held a carnival in his honour
6Wol TIL Theodore Roosevelt believed that criminals should have been sterilized.
M7oP7 TIL prevailing local lore credits the Shaka to Hamana Kalili who lost the three middle fingers of his right hand while working at a sugar mill. Kalili was then shifted to guarding the sugar train, and his all-clear wave is said to have evolved into the shaka as children imitated the gesture.
E1JYo TIL Russia developed the Istrebitel Sputnikov (IS). The IS, launched via ICBM, would maneuver to within a 1 km of a target satellite and detonate onboard explosives. The IS was tested approximately 20 times between 1963 and 1982, with several confirmed satellite kills.
pZL8 TIL that the bar tab of a 1787 farewell party for George Washington is still intact. “According to the bill… [The Founding Fathers] drank 54 bottles of Madeira, 60 bottles of claret, 8 of whiskey, 22 of porter, 8 of hard cider, 12 of beer, and 7 bowls of alcoholic punch”. The party had 55 attendees.