› added 10 years ago

175

TIL according to an analysis by the Guttmacher Institute, unplanned pregnancies cost US taxpayers $2.1B each year, more than half of U.S. pregnancies are unintended, and roughly 1-in-20 American women of reproductive age have an unplanned pregnancy each year.

l78Y5 TIL 15th century Europe experienced the Great Bullion Famine in which several nations were unable to mint their own currency. The causes include the black death and the bullion outflow from trade with the East. The famine was resolved through accessing new metal sources in the New World and Africa.
GpE5 TIL when Colonel Robert Gould Shaw, commander of the all-black 54th Regiment during the American Civil War, died at Fort Wagner, he was stripped and buried with his men as an insult. His father, however, proclaimed that he was proud to know that he rests with his brave and devoted soldiers.
X0Am8 TIL in 1925, a forger convinced Portugal's money printer to make him 200,000 bills, worth ~1% of Portugal's GDP. They were easily laundered, since they weren't actually counterfeit. To cover his tracks, he started buying a controlling interest in the Bank of Portugal, but was caught. He was 28.
j68yN TIL about a chair made from the wood of the medieval London bridge with a seat made from a foundation stone of the same bridge.
vPLyr TIL of Ken McElroy, who was shot dead in front of up to 46 witnesses, but nobody was able to be convinced to take the stand due to his reputation and behaviour. The killer has never been prosecuted.