› added 4 years ago

223

TIL that a 'basket case' was coined in WWI to describe a soldier who had lost his limbs in battle and was carried out 'in a basket'

Read more mentalfloss.com

via reddit.com

x6bWw TIL : Operation Legacy : A British Colonial Office (later Foreign Office) programme to destroy or hide files that would implicate the British Empire in wrongdoing, as to prevent them from being used by their ex-colonies. It ran till 70s
b6Mjj TIL After Imperial China was overthrown in 1911, the Qing court sent an envoy, Tang Shaoyi, to negotiate peace with the Republic of China. Tang visited Sun Yat-sen in the Presidential Palace and was so moved that he switched sides and became the first Premier of the National Republic
Brpex TIL Stephen King kept a severe alcohol and cocaine addiction hidden from his family for eight years. He claims he kept the addiction well-hidden but eventually, "...the books [started] to show it after a while. 'Misery' is a book about cocaine. Annie Wilkes is cocaine. She was my number-one fan."
Z8oZQ TIL some trees have a sex.
lxAV TIL that the creepy white face animation in the “We Can’t Stop” music video is actually from a very early CGI demo from 1974.