› added 1 year ago

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TIL, Before travelling to Venezuela, the US government suggests establishing a “proof of life” protocol with your loved ones, so that if you are taken hostage, your loved ones know specific questions (and answers) to ask the hostage-takers to be sure that you are alive.

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JYZgm TIL about Ern Malley, a fictitious Australian poet created to ridicule modernist poetry. A modernist journal devoted an issue to his poems and the editor was sued for immoral material. A policeman said "I don't know what 'incestuous' means, but I think there is a suggestion of indecency about it."
78V5O TIL of the British warship the HMS Shannon that captured the USS Chesapeake during The War of 1812. The Shannon’s unimpressive appearance which was on the expressed order of the captain Philip Broke, fooled the enemy into vastly underestimating her highly well trained crew.
167yO TIL that the word “fragging” refers to a soldier’s deliberate or attempted killing of a fellow soldier, usually a superior. The term was coined by U.S. military personnel during the Vietnam War, during which there were nearly 900 documented and suspected fragging incidents from 1969 to 1972.
e0vVE TIL: Nasa had a 400$ fine for littering in the australian outback due to debris from skylab
9wNNX TIL about the first black NYPD officer Sam Battle, who rose through the ranks to be a Sergeant then Lieutenant then Parole Commissioner despite institutional racism and even death threats, and also held the record of the largest baby born in North Carolina...at 16 pounds.