› added 5 years ago

112

TIL that John Paul Jones, the “Father of the American Navy”, a legendary admiral after whom warships were named, was born simply “John Paul”. He added “Jones” when he joined the U.S. Navy because he was a criminal fugitive from England.

VML0Q TIL Warren Buffett plans on giving only a small fraction of his weath to his children when he dies, stating "you should leave your children enough so they can do anything, but not enough so they can do nothing." He instead will donate nearly all of his wealth to charitable foundations.
M6aK TIL that due to decades of fire prevention leading to an increase in fuel for forest fires, Smokey Bear has actually helped make forest fires more dangerous than otherwise
6Ev1W TIL in 1987, FBI agent Robert Hanssen was tasked by his superiors to find a mole within the agency after the FBI's moles in the KGB were caught. In reality, he was the mole, working with the KGB since 1979. He was eventually caught in 2001 and is currently serving 15 consecutive life sentences.
e0OKg TIL that Tatooine was planned to be a jungle planet, but was changed because of the idea that spending months filming in the jungle would make Lucas "itchy".
MevD0 TIL that the Chehalis (Sts'Ailes) people of southwest Canada begin their count of months from the arrival of spawning chinook salmon (in Gregorian calendar October), and count 10 lunar months, leaving an uncounted period of around 70 days until the next chinook salmon run