› added 4 years ago

388

TIL about the female pilots who fought for the Soviet Union in WW2. They were deemed the Night Witches as their wooden planes had the sound of a flying broom and were very crucial to the war effort. They only lost 30 out of 400 women who flew over 30,000 missions.

VMLwD TIL that in the 1920s, Bhagat Singh Thind, an Indian Sikh man, tried to argue to the Supreme Court of the United States that he was "white" on the grounds that anthropologists at that time classified people from India as "caucasian." The Court rejected his argument.
vPK6B TIL that the oldest named person in history is believed to be Kushim - an accountant dealing with barley sales and living in ancient Sumer (modern day south-central Iraq) in around 3400 - 3000 BCE. At this time, writing was only used for essential record keeping.
wLEv7 TIL Scientists can use a person's own stem cells to make male eggs and female sperm. They have also successfully fertilized a male mouse with an egg cell made of its own cells, producing healthy offspring only from a single mouse's genome. So far, this has not been tested with humans.
gMNbA TIL that in 2013 Detroit was so broke that they were unable to print out death certificates because they had not been able to pay the company that provided the special embossed paper on which they were printed, and subsequently ran out.
0lXM TIL that Ted Lindsay - one of the greatest players in NHL history - refused to attend his own Hall of Fame ceremony because women weren’t allowed to attend. The league changed the rules to allow women the following year.