› added 4 years ago

233

TIL that Confederate General Martin Green's last words disregarded the threat of enemy fire at the battle of Vicksburg: "A bullet has not yet been molded that will kill me". He would then be killed by a Union sharpshooter moments later...

XWpQ TIL on March 12 1981, two different comic strips, with the same name and same general idea were published on the same day, one in the USA and the other in the UK, created by two different artists, who had absolutely no knowledge of one another. The comic strip in question is Dennis the Menace.
5YbJP TIL about Paradoxical Undressing, a rare symptom of hypothermia where the patient undresses due to vasoconstriction tricking him into thinking that he is hot.
WNO4 TIL that Senegalese Peacekeeper, Captain Mbaye Diagne, disobeyed the UN mandate and personally saved “as many as 600” Rwandans during the genocide. He was killed by a mortar shell a month before the genocide ended.
0dQER TIL Isaac Newton's famous "Standing on the shoulders of giants" quote was actually a sarcastic rebuttal to his rival, Robert Hooke. Accused of plagiarism, Newton parroted the phrase to take a jab at Hooke's slight build, in effect saying that Hooke's work wasn't even worthy of being plagiarized.
MelGK TIL that juveniles of the endangered Regent Honeyeater are struggling to learn their species' mating call due to there being so few adults. 12% of males were found to be copying other species' songs instead, further contributing to their decline.