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TIL that questions have been raised about the legitimacy of Queen Victoria and that she may have been the result of an affair with a non-royal. This has revolved around the hereditary haemophilia that she was the carrier for, and that hadn’t been detected in the royal bloodline previously.

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0XXN TIL Tommie Smith and John Carlos the athletes responsible for the 1968 Olympics Black Power salute were pallbearers at Peter Normans funeral. Norman was the white athlete on the podium with them at the time.
M7OZb TIL Miranda Gibson lived on a small platform 60 metres above the ground in a 400-year-old Eucalyptus tree to protect the surrounding forest. A bush fire forced her to evacuate after 449 days but Tasmania’s Wilderness World Heritage Area was officially extended by 170,000 hectares a few months later.
wgY7 TIL that grasshoppers and locusts are the same insect. Harmless grasshoppers can undergo hormonal changes which transform them into the swarming monstrosities.
WNON TIL virtually all Middle Ages scholars believed that the Earth is spherical. The myth that people in the Middle Ages thought the earth is flat appears to date from the 17th century as part of the campaign by Protestants against Catholic teaching.
JYxA8 TIL that in terms of the average number of steps required to link actors to other actors, Kevin Bacon is only the 543rd ranked actor in Hollywood history. The actors with the lowest average number of steps are Christopher Lee, Harvey Keitel, Christopher Plummer, Michael Caine, and Donald Sutherland