› added 1 year ago

55

TIL of New Sweden, a Swedish colony along the lower reaches of the Delaware River from 1638 to 1655. The colony was established during the Thirty Years' War when Sweden was a great military power.

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x6JWD TIL that Jesse Owens stayed at the same hotel as his white compatriots during the 1936 Olympics held under the Nazi regime, something he could not have done at the time at his native US
6QMZ TIL: Narwhals’ ‘horn’ is actually an erupted left tooth, that can sense temperature, salinity, particle density, and can 'feel’
wlZM TIL that in 1974 a US soldier stole a helicopter and flew to the White House in Washington, D.C. As he hovered above the south grounds, the Executive Protective Service shot and injured him, forcing him to land. He only received a one-year prison sentence and $2,400 in fines.
d8A87 TIL that metal stretchers used to transport dead/wounded citizens after WWII airraids in London were repurposed to be used as fences around apartment buildings. Some are still in use today.
1aWQV TIL the Portuguese man o' war isn't a singular organism; instead, it's made up of specialized individual animals of the same species