› added 6 years ago

87

TIL about George Ray Tweed, one of six men to refuse to surrender to the Japanese on Guam in 1941. 5 were captured & beheaded. He avoided capture for two years and seven months when the USA recaptured the island.

Read more wikipedia.org

via reddit.com

VM85G TIL In 1967 Michael J. Adams (Maj USAF) flew an X-15 to an altitude above 50 miles and qualified as an astronaut according to the U.S. definition of the boundary of space. Moments later the craft broke apart, killing Adams and destroying the X-15-3. He was the first American space mission fatality.
x6NQw TIL that Pope Francis was a nightclub bouncer.
xb15 TIL an extremely effective Lyme disease vaccine was discontinued because an anti-vaccination lobby group destroyed it’s marketability. 121 people out of the 1.4 million vaccinated claimed it gave them arthritis.
rRnX0 TIL saying “ahoy-hoy” was at one time the preferred way to answer the phone.
e06VE TIL about an 8 foot tall shepherd who was so large that he was able to outrun the Emperor's horse before overcoming 7 of Rome's legionnaires. He was immediately inducted into the army and eventually became Emperor.