› added 4 weeks ago

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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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BVee TIL Otto von Bismarck once stated that when war came to Europe “it will be some damn fool thing in the Balkans that sets it off” thirty years before Franz Ferdinand was assassinated which kicked off the start of World War One.
D10xP TIL: Duke Ellington's signature tune, "Take the 'A' Train" was recovered from a trash can just in time before being gone forever. Composer Billy Strayhorn had discarded it as second rate.
wxnW TIL evidence shows that the space shuttle Challenger’s crew survived the explosion and could have been conscious until the crew cabin hit the ocean. 4 of 5 recovered crew air packs had been activated and pilot switches that could only have been moved manually by a person were moved.
09oL TIL in the US, more babies are born on Monday and Tuesday than any other day because doctors don’t like scheduling c-sections and induced labour on the weekend.
nblW TIL That Lennart Green, world champion close-up card magician was disqualified from the 1988 competition when the magician judges thought he must have been using stooges to shuffle the cards. He performed the same trick 3 years later, asking the judges to do the shuffling and won.