› added 8 years ago

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TIL that in Singapore, during WWII, the Malayan Infantry noticed a troop of Punjabi soldiers marching in a line of four, instead of a line of three as how the soldiers of the British Army would and opened fire, killing several men. The Punjabi soldiers were actually Japanese soldiers in disguise.

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rNYpy TIL that in 2013 a climber found a box full of rubies, sapphires, and emeralds on a remote glacier on Mont Blanc. Authorities determined they were likely from an Indian plane that crashed there in 1966 and gave the climber half the gems (worth $169,000) to reward his honesty in turning them in.
6EWOZ TIL red tape was actually used to bind government documents and you had to literally cut through them to get stuff done. And you can buy pieces of US red tape from the National Archives.
R71Z1 TIL about St. Lucia's flood. A storm tide in 1287 in Northern Europe that was so large it killed between 50,000 to 80,000 people and created a large saltwater bay in the Netherlands called the Zuiderzee (Southern Sea)
RxW6 TIL the German V-2 Rocket developed in 1944 was the first man-made object to enter space. Also the team which developed the V-2 were the key to land the first man on the moon.
jNd8R TIL The last person to be convicted of blasphemy in the United States was an Arkansas man who in 1928 put a sign in his storefront reading, "Evolution Is True. The Bible's a Lie. God's a Ghost." He spent 3 months in jail.