› added 6 years ago

164

TIL about Sessue Hayakawa, a Japanese-born actor who became a major Hollywood star in the early silent film period of the 1910's, and noted for his status as a sex symbol, with "his most rabid fan base [being] white women."

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wKR1 TIL there is penguin called Sandy in a german zoo that is in love with her human keeper since 1996
N7mKE TIL about the Incroyables and Merveilleuses: Aristocratic survivors of the French Revolution who created a macabre and decadent subculture and "greeted one another with violent movements of the head as if in decapitation"
a8pno TIL the Alabama Hills are in California, not Alabama. Confederate sympathizers named the range after the CSS Alabama, a Confederate warship deployed during the Civil War. Kearsarge, another area of the Sierra, is named for the ship that sunk the Alabama.
W7y89 TIL of Suero de Quiñones, a knight who spent a month camped next to a bridge with 10 of his friends to challenge every knight who crossed to a joust for no reason except to meet a goal of breaking "300 lances".
W79Xd TIL Marthe Cnockaert was Mentioned in Dispatches, awarded Legions of Honour and the Iron Cross for her WW1 service. The Iron Cross was for medical services to Germans while the others were for Allies spy work. Cnockaert was captured but not executed because of her Iron Cross, she survived the war.