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TIL that in 18th century Russia there was a black African man called Abram Petrovich Gannibal. Freed from slavery and adopted by Peter the Great as his godson, he reached the status of nobility - with one of his great-grandsons being Alexander Pushkin, one of the greatest Russian writers in history.

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QJgjM TIL of Marcella LeBeau, a WWII Army Nurse who served in the wake of D-Day and the Battle of the Bulge. She received the French Legion of Honor, the highest French order of merit for military and civil merits. The Native American woman is 98 and still active in her community in South Dakota.
dDvLK TIL Charles de Gaulle was not told about the D-Day landings until 2 days before as the British and French leaders did not believe the French could keep the information secret.
d8nwQ TIL that a Guard Llama is a real thing, not a joke. They are used in the Western USA by ranchers to guard livestock.
d8ndr TIL about Sleeping Beauty Syndrome, an extremely rare illness, which causes episodes of being mostly asleep for weeks at a time. If awake during an episode, sufferers are confused about what is real and what is a dream. The condition appears in adolescence and resolves itself 10-15 years later.
loxgV TIL that in 1873 a man defrauded the residents of Alta, Utah out of $2,500 by claiming to be able to raise the dead. They paid him the money NOT to raise anybody. The story was later adapted into "The Twilight Zone" episode "Mr. Garrity and the graves."