› added 8 years ago

351

TIL that Queen Elizabeth uses signals with her handbag to send secret messages to her staff

Read more express.co.uk

via reddit.com

M78d7 TIL that Mark David Chapman besides John Lennon contemplated killing other public figures, including David Bowie,Johnny Carson,Jackie Kennedy,Elizabeth Taylor,Paul McCartney,and Ronald Reagan
b9KP0 TIL New Zealand was home to some of the largest birds on Earth around 600 years ago, the Moas. These ostrich-like birds were as tall as 3m but went extinct due to overhunting by the first Polynesian settlers.
0wPx5 TIL 'Hello' as a greeting is credited to Thomas Edison. Hello likely derived from hullo, a expression of surprise, but was seen by Edison as good greeting for telephone conversations. Alexander Graham Bell initially used Ahoy (as used on ships) as a telephone greeting, but it didn't take off.
4keN5 TIL of The Ghost Army. They were a United States Army tactical deception unit during World War II. During their tenure, the Ghost Army carried out more than 20 deception campaigns, putting on a "traveling road show" using inflatable tanks, sound trucks, fake radio transmissions, scripts and pretense
p8kE4 TIL: Runaway truck ramp are long, sand- or gravel-filled lanes connected to a steep downhill grade section of a main road, so large trucks or buses can stop safely, when they have brake problems, through kinetic energy.