› added 3 years ago

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TIL that "Charlie" as used to refer to enemies in movies like Forrest Gump comes from the spoken alphabet, where the words "Victor Charlie" meant the letters VC = Viet Cong. As this was used a lot in radio communications, over time it became shortened to just "Charlie".

Z8OaG TIL Samuel Stanhope Smith had a theory that Africans were darker because they were covered in small freckles that when combined made a “universal freckle”
YlVr TIL A photo of a man stealing a wallet in a store was on the bottom of The Lewiston Tribune on December 14, 2007. Above it was an unrelated photo of a man painting a business. Readers noticed both men were wearing the same clothes. They were identified to be the same person leading to his arrest.
0dpo5 TIL in 1990, a panel of the windscreen on British Airways Flight 5390 fell out at 17,000ft, causing the cockpit to decompress & its captain to be sucked halfway out of the aircraft. He survived.
m1EjE TIL Marquis de la Fayette, known as 'The Hero of the Two Worlds' for the key role he played in both the American and French Revolutions, is descended from another man also known as de la Fayette, who was a companion-at-arms of Joan of Arc and fought England in the Siege of Orleans in 1429
kBe TIL that the plot of Finding Nemo would not have unfolded anywhere close to how it did in the movie. Clown fish are hermaphrodites so when Marlin’s wife died, Marlin would have changed his gender and become a female and raise Nemo, who would have then mate with Marlin and have children of their own