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TIL The Catholic order of the Jesuits managed to create what is described as a "socialist Theocracy" among native Americans living near the Rio de la Plata, they also armed the native Americans with then modern weaponry to defend themselves against incursions by slave traders into their territory.

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JYR6k TIL one of the selling points for introducing the guillotine during the French Revolution was equality - commoners could now enjoy the comparatively quick and painless death of decapitation just like the nobility, and would no longer have to endure brutal deaths such as those caused by hanging.
5Vvdr TIL Grigori Perelman was offered the Fields Medal in 2006 and the Millennium Prize of 1 million dollars in 2010 for his contribution in solving the Poincaré Conjecture, an open problem in mathematics for a century. He rejected both of them.
8adyb TIL that Doane Robinson, the historian who came up with the idea for Mount Rushmore, initially didn't want it to feature former presidents. Robinson wanted sculptures of Lewis and Clark, Buffalo Bill Cody, Chief Red Cloud and other Sioux warriors but the sculptor refused to focus on regional heroes
N7aOJ TIL about the Belga, Belgium's parallel currency unit worth 5 Belgian Francs, introduced in 1927 to prevent confusion with the French Franc following the dissolution of the Latin Economic Union and the end of Napoleon III's monetary union.
g4aW TIL Emma Morano is the last person alive from the 1800s at 117 years old