› added 7 months ago

30

TIL that Boston Corbett, the man who shot and killed John Wilkes Booth, had castrated himself with a pair of scissors years earlier

Read more wikipedia.org

via reddit.com

Ypmev TIL of the 761st Tank battalion. Made up of almost completely African-American tankers, it was considered one of the best tank units of the war and held 1 Medal of Honor winner, 11 Silver Stars and 300 Purple Hearts.
AD5ma TIL that the Soviet Union still has the most medals for Volleyball at the Olympics
rNXP1 TIL that the seedless bananas that we consume are called Cavendish bananas and they will go extinct in the next decade due to a fungus called Panama disease.
pYwxZ TIL that in 1940, after the fall of France during WW2, the British Royal Navy attacked and destroyed, neutralized or captured the largest ships in the French naval fleet in order to ensure they would not fall into German hands.
R7OP4 TIL about Alexander Winton, who built and sold the first American-made gasoline car on March 24, 1898. The public was skeptical. "To advocate replacing the horse, which had served man through centuries, marked one as an imbecile."