#factoftheday — Public Fediverse posts
Live and recent posts from across the Fediverse tagged #factoftheday, aggregated by home.social.
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In 2014, Spain announced a new law granting citizenship to descendants of Sephardic Jews expelled in the 15th century.
The 1492 ‘Alhambra Decree’ had forced Jews to convert to Christianity or be expelled. The 2014 move acknowledged the historical injustice.
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Białowieża Forest is one of the last and the largest remaining parts of the immense primeval forest that once stretched across the European Plain.
The World Heritage Site straddles the border between Poland and Belarus and is home to the wisent, Europe’s heaviest land animal.
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While tumbleweed is iconic in Westerns set in the Americas, the plant is originally from eastern Europe.
The tumbleweed (or ‘Russian Thistle’) didn’t arrive in North America from Europe until the 1870’s, most likely with shipments of seeds.
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The Republic of Cospaia was a small microstate, in what is now Italy, that was independent from 1440 to 1826.
It unexpectedly gained independence in 1440 after a pope sold territory to the Republic of Florence and a small strip of land went unmentioned in the sale.
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French philosopher and writer Jean-Paul Sartre became the first person to decline a Nobel Prize.
Awarded the 1964 Nobel Prize in Literature, Sartre said he always declined official honors and that a writer should not allow himself to be turned into an institution.
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Russia’s 1917 ‘October Revolution’ took place in November.
The second part of the Russian Revolution happened in what we now call November because Russia didn't switch to the current ‘Gregorian’ calendar system until after the revolution.