In the 60s USA struck a deal with the UK to buy an unpopulated Indian Ocean island for a military base. UK didn’t have an unpopulated island, so it forcibly expelled the inhabitants of the British Indian Ocean Territory until it was uninhabited.

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Germany finally paid off all of its World War 1 debt in 2010.

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Augustus II the strong, 18th century King of Poland, imprisoned an alchemist to produce gold from base metals. Instead, to earn his freedom, the alchemist produced porcelain for the king. Although the king liked porcelain, freedom was not granted.

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Men began “shaving” as early as 100,000 years ago to prevent frostbite from a wet beard.

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The overthrow of the monarchy in Brazil was such a minor affair that even the few people who did witness it, did not realize they just saw a revolution.

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USA was one of the only 7 countries to vote against setting up of the International Criminal Court, along with China, Iraq, Israel, Libya, Qatar, and Yemen.

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In Ancient Rome during funerals, a person called an Archimime would walk behind the deceased and imitate the person like they were still alive.

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Joseph Smith, the founder of the LDS Church, aka Mormon Church, was assassinated in 1844 in Illinois by a mob. He was running for president at the time and he's the first presidential candidate in US History to be assassinated

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The "Perfect Aryan" poster child that was widely used in Nazi propaganda was actually Jewish. The photo was selected from a Nazi-held contest, where the photographer of the baby had submitted the photo as an ironic joke.

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Pope John Paul II forgave his attempted assassin Mehmet Ali Ağca who shot him four times in 1981. At the Pope's request, the Italian President pardoned Ağca of the crime and he was deported back to Turkey. Ağca requested to meet Pope Francis in 2014 but Francis chose to decline.

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The Black Death was partially caused by a mass execution of cats due to supposed association with the Devil, allowing rats and their fleas to rapidly spread.

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15th century Korea developed the Geobukseon (turtle ship), a warship roofed with spiked plates to prevent boarding actions. Each Geobukseon was also designed with a dragon head on the bow that hid a cannon or could release smoke to inspire terror or cover ship movements.

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Zhu Di, the Yongle Emperor of the Chinese Ming dynasty was given a Giraffe as tribute in 1414. The animal had been transported by envoys all the way from Kenya to Bengal to Beijing.

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The richest man in history was Musa I (1312 – 1337) of Mali in Africa. He went on pilgrimage to Mecca in 1324 with his procession that is reported to have included 60,000 men, 12,000 slaves who each carried four-pound gold bars, heralds dressed in silks, who bore gold staffs, organized horses and handled bags. Also there were 80 camels, which varying reports claim carried between 50 and 300 pounds of gold dust each. He gave away so much of gold to the poor and spent so much on souvenirs that he caused a super inflation and devalued the metal for the next decade in the region.

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Zhang Zongchang, a Chinese warlord, had proclaimed that he would return only in a coffin if he was defeated in battle. When his forces were pushed back in a campaign, he was true to his word—he was paraded through the streets, sitting in his coffin and smoking a cigar.

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The British colonizers in Sierra Leone used the same tactic of cutting of hands to account for bullets spent as used in the Congo

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Mahatma Gandhi might have been a racist, referring to Blacks as: “savage,” “raw” and living a life of “indolence and nakedness. He also supported the British Empire during the Boer war where over 3500 Zulus were killed.

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The earliest documentation of abortion is from 1550 BCE.

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During the segregation in South Africa, there was a pencil test where on would be classified as non-white/non-European. One would put a pencil into their hair and shake their head, when it fell out, you were deemed white.

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