› added 6 months ago

28

TIL that Lemuel Cook (1759-1866) was one of the last verifiable surviving veterans of the American Revolutionary War and he had lived long enough to see the full duration of the American Civil War (1861-1865).

Read more wikipedia.org

via reddit.com

MeVeW TIL when Gandhi's wife was stricken with pneumonia, doctors told her husband that a shot of penicillin would heal her, he refused to have "alien" medicine used and she died. Soon after, Gandhi caught malaria and, relenting from the standard applied to his wife, allowed doctors to save his life.
D14YP TIL The Canadian military has developed a stealth snowmobile that is able to switch to "silent mode" for covert special ops missions in the Arctic
rN90o TIL the longest traffic jam in history lasted for 12 days. It occurred in China in 2010 on the Beijing-Tibet Expressway and stretched for over 62 miles (100km).
pD1p TIL in 1982 the University of Pittsburgh rugby team was caught using human heads stolen from the schools anatomy lab to warm up before a game.
OoA67 TIL that, Nepalese Gurkha Tul Bahadur Pun, recipient of the Victoria Cross during WWII, had his application for settlement in the UK initially denied on the ground that he had "failed to demonstrate strong ties with the UK."