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1.At one point, Benjamin Disraeli and Benjamin Harrison were in office at the same time.
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Disraeli died in 1881, eight years before Benjamin Harrison became 23rd US President.
2.The longest reigning king in the history of the British Isles was called George.
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George III was King of Great Britain and Ireland, and later King of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland, for 59 years and 96 days, making his reign the third longest in the history of both Britain and Ireland after Victoria and Elizabeth II.
3.Japan briefly controlled all of the Korean Peninsula during the 16th century.
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Japan tried to invade Korea in 1592 and again in 1597, but during both invasions the Japanese forces were driven away before they could conquer the entire peninsula.
4.São Paulo was the first capital of Brazil.
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Salvador served as the seat for the Portuguese colonial administration of Brazil until 1763, when it was replaced by Rio de Janeiro. The latter then became the capital of the Empire of Brazil in 1822, and was only replaced as the capital of Brazil by Brasília in 1960.
5.During the 18th century, there were two capital cities in the world called Edo.
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The capital of Japan during the Tokugawa shogunate, which existed between 1603 and 1868, was Edo, now called Tokyo. The other capital called Edo was the capital of the Kingdom of Benin (also known as the Edo Kingdom), which is now called Benin City.
6.There was once an ancient Greek settlement on the site of modern Odessa, Ukraine.
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Some scholars believe that the settlement was established by the city of Histria, which existed on the coast of what is now Romania.
7.New Zealand has been inhabited for longer than Easter Island.
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Various dates have been put forward for the initial settlement of Easter Island, ranging between 300 and 1200, with 1200 being the most likely. New Zealand was settled between 1280 and 1350.
8.The earliest known form of alphabetic writing used symbols that are thought to be based on Egyptian hieroglyphs.
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The script is known as Proto-Sinaitic, and is thought to have been created by Canaanites living in Egypt who repurposed Egyptian hieroglyphs to create a writing system for their Semitic language. This writing system then evolved into the Ancient South Arabian script and the Phoenician alphabet, the latter later leading to other similar writing systems such as the Greek alphabet.
9.The largest accidental, non-nuclear, man-made explosion in history occurred in Canada.
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The Halifax Explosion occurred in 1917 when the French cargo ship SS Mont-Blanc, which was carrying high explosives, collided with the Norwegian SS Imo in a strait called the Narrows, located in Halifax, Nova Scotia. The explosion released the equivalent energy of around 2.9 kilotons of TNT.
10.Some sovereign states had Zoroastrianism as their state religion in the 9th century.
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The Bavand dynasty and the Qarinvand dynasty, both located on the southern coast of the Caspian Sea, were ruled by Zoroastrian rulers until partway through the 9th century.
11.Atahualpa, the ruler of the Inca Empire who was killed by the Spanish, was the final monarch to use the title Sapa Inca.
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There were three vassal Inca Emperors installed by the Spanish who used the title Sapa Inca, and the second of these founded the Neo-Inca State, whose rulers also used the title Sapa Inca.
12.Venice once sold slaves from Europe to the Moors in North Africa.
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Initially, the slaves were from Italy, but after the sale of Christians to Muslims was banned, the Venetians sold pagan Europeans such as the Slavs. Some of the merchants selling Slavic slaves to Venice were Slavic themselves. Other states, notably the Duchy of Amalfi and the Republic of Genoa, also sold slaves.
13.The Kingdom of Axum was the earliest kingdom to exist in Ethiopia.
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D'mt, which existed circa 980-400 BC, was located in Eritrea and northern Ethiopia and may have evolved into the Kingdom of Axum. The Land of Punt may have also existed in Ethiopia, although its exact location is unknown.
14.The Navajo originally came from what is now Nevada.
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The Navajo, along with the Apache, are thought to have migrated from what is now northwestern Canada and eastern Alaska to the Southwestern United States, where they now live, in around the year 1400. Speakers of languages related to Navajo and Apache, which all belong to the Athabaskan language family, still live in Canada and Alaska.
15.Sikkim only became an Indian state in the 1970s.
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Between 1950 and 1975, the Kingdom of Sikkim was a protectorate of India. In 1975, the Indian army entered the capital of the kingdom, Gangtok, due to the resentment of the people of Sikkim to the Chogyal (ruler) after allegations of discrimination against Nepali Hindus arose. The army surrounded the Chogyal's palace and killed the guards, after which a referendum was held on the monarchy. The monarchy was abolished and a new parliament was installed; the leader, Kazi Lhendup Dorjee, proposed a bill for Sikkim to become an Indian state, which was accepted by the Indian government.