› added 5 years ago

71

TIL The earliest e-cigarette can be traced to American Herbert A. Gilbert, who in 1963 patented "a smokeless non-tobacco cigarette" that involved "replacing burning tobacco and paper with heated, moist, flavored air". This device produced flavored steam without nicotine.

MBdA TIL “Black Wall Street”, the most affluent black neighbourhood in the early 20th century, was nearly wiped out by white residents massacring the black population in 1921
GYaPN TIL of the traditional "Honors of War", where surrendering armies would leave the battlefield with banners waving honorably and their band playing the enemy's anthem. After winning the American Revolution, George Washington famously refused to allow the British to play an American or French song
EK4X TIL that all unreleased Kennedy assassination documents are scheduled to be released to the public by 2017, twenty-five years after the passage of the JFK Records Act. Among the items most sought after by researchers are some 1,171 documents still closed by the CIA on national security grounds.
v18k8 TIL That a 99-year-old war veteran who is walking 100 laps of his garden before he turns 100 has raised more than £12m for the NHS.
4kRlg TIL: 1) The Latin word for "ants" is "formica". 2) Formic acid is produced by ants. 3) Engineers invented a plastic laminate to replace mica as an electrical insulation and named it Formica ("for mica", get it? ). 4) Despite its name, Formica is not made with formic acid. Whew!