› added 6 years ago

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TIL Clara Barton held a clerkship in the US Patent Office with pay equal to that of men. She was the first woman to hold a position or pay of this type in government. Being wrongly fired in 1857 she returned under Lincoln as a copyist to help pave the way for future women's equality in government.

Read more womenshistory.org

via reddit.com

m1WPO TIL that in its first appearance at the Olympics, Suriname was represented by a single athlete, a runner who missed his event for arriving late to the heat after being given wrong information about the time.
9Y89p TIL: That after a plane crash that wiped out almost the entire Russian National Hockey team in 1950, Stalin's son feared his fathers reaction and recruited new team in one day and his father did not even notice
8eAQ8 TIL Mars had a prime meridian (+0 hour timezone) 50 years before Earth
46gw TIL that there has always been exactly 425 licensed gondoliers in Venice, and up until 2010 not a single one was a woman.
ANaQa TIL clinical obesity is considered so beautiful in sub-Saharan Africa that people use drugs to gain more weight.