› added 6 years ago

225

TIL about the American town 'Merrymount', founded 1624. Named from slang at the time for 'illicit' forms of sex - the town rejected Puritan values welcoming non-Heterosexuals, freeing indentured servants and intermarrying Native Americans. Five years later it was invaded and razed to the ground.

Read more independent.co.uk

via reddit.com

WkXl8 TIL about the elephant bird that went extinct around 1000 -1200 BCE. The birds were so large they could reach the weight of 1,600 pounds and grow as tall as 9.8 feet. There eggs had a circumference of 35 inches. They once lived on Madagascar and the closest living relative is the Kiwi.
negLB TIL that Emperor Hirohito of Japan was commissioned as a lieutenant in the army at age 13, escaped multiple assassination attempts, and became an acclaimed marine biologist after WWII
mxkkR TIL of Aurora, an exascale computer that neuroscientists plan to use to make a map of the human brain, or connectome. The brain has more connections than the milky way has stars; mapping it would represent the single largest dataset ever collected about anything in the history of the world.
p89J4 TIL that the word quarantine comes from an Italian variant of ‘quaranta giorni’, meaning forty days, which was the period that all ships were required to be isolated before passengers and crew could go ashore during the Black Death plague epidemic. They would fly this flag known as “Yellow Jack”.
LkYpm TIL that four people were targets for assassination the night that Lincoln was killed. John Wilkes Booth was the only one who succeeded.