› added 4 years ago

53

TIL that the fourth funnel on the Titanic was fake. It was for appearances only: it made the ship look bigger. It was not connected to the charcoal ovens, but it was connected to the first-class smoking room, making it a sort of oversized kitchen hood.

Read more wikipedia.org

via reddit.com

KAeQ TIL a 9 year old boy ran away from home to fight in the Civil War. The army adopted him as their drummer boy, being too young to be a soldier. At age 11, he became the youngest noncommissioned officer in Army history, and decades later he retired as the last veteran of the civil war on active duty.
96PB TIL that people back before the 1800’s used to sleep twice during the night.
9Ykr6 TIL that in 1938, Henry Ford was awarded Nazi Germany's Grand Cross of the German Eagle. That is the medal awarded to foreigners sympathetic to Nazism.
p8Ybe TIL there was an Egyptian Pharaoh whose name in hieroglyphics was a pair of outstretched arms followed by three penises
dpV8 TIL a team of scientists suppressed genes for beak development in a chicken embryo to find out what bird ancestors looked like – and the embryo grew into a chicken with the face of a dinosaur.