› added 13 years ago

149

TIL that the United States Marine Corps is older than the United States.

Read more wikipedia.org

via reddit.com

x6Qjo TIL in Western Europe in the 19th century, women swimmers were encouraged to wear a bathing gown made of wool, with weights sewn into the hems so that they would not rise up in the water. Such measures to protect "modesty" were common in the era when women began competing in modern Olympic swimming
g8mL TIL Andy Kaufman would punish heckling audiences by reading from The Great Gatsby. At one point, he would “give in” and play a record instead, which turned out to be a recording of himself reading from where he left off.
MeGAb TIL That Singapore gained its independence upon being expelled from Malaysia over racial tensions between the Chinese and Malays, making it the only modern sovereign state to receive independence involuntarily
8aGaX TIL Pandora's Jar was called Pandora's Box due to translation error and the mistake has stuck!
kRVE TIL the lyrics of the first original USSR anthem commissioned by Stalin, the lyrics of the second anthem (after De-Stalinization) and the lyrics of the current anthem of Russian Federation were all written by the same man, Sergey Mikhalkov (who was mostly a writer of children books and fables).