› added 5 years ago

171

TIL about Atomic Vets that were soldiers secretly exposed to nuclear weapons by the US during the cold war

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ynWX TIL when selecting a name for the rebellious son in The Simpsons, Matt Groening felt using his own name would be too obvious, so he went with an anagram of ‘brat’: Bart.
4XXJR TIL seamen must keep a daily record of their work known as a Certificate of Continuous Discharge
KO5X4 TIL James Stockdale, a Vietnam War POW who didn't want to be in Vietnam, spent over seven years in a POW camp - four of them in solitary confinement and two in leg irons - and credits his Stoic philosophy studies for allowing him and his men to survive the constant torture and interrogation
5YlNQ TIL of George Koval, who, in WWII, was an American soldier that secretly gave info the USSR about the Manhattan Project. In 1999, although living in Russia and having been outed as a spy for nearly a half-century, he applied for an American Veteran's Social Security Cheque. He was denied.
rRMxy TIL that "ang mo" - meaning "red-haired" - is a term used in Singapore and Taiwan to refer to white people, while "ang mo sai" - meaning "red-haired sh*t" - is a term used in those countries to refer to Chinese people who aren't able to read Chinese and have lost their cultural identity