› added 7 months ago

22

TIL the "Kamikaze of 1274 and 1281" otherwise known as "The Divine Wind", is massively attributed to the ending of the Mongol invasions. Along with the Mamluks stopping their western expansion, The divine wind typhoons blew through some hundreds of ships, devastating a force of 140,000 Mongols.

1aL84 TIL that in 1910, two boys, Louis and Temple Abernathy decided to cross America by horseback from Oklahoma to Manhattan to meet Theodore Roosevelt. They were 10 and 6 years old. Then they decided to buy a car to come back home, while their horses made the return by train.
J1OBQ TIL "The blood of the covenant is thicker than the water of the womb" is a recent and unsourced saying, and nothing indicates it is the true origin of the phrase "blood is thicker than water"
ZpEyR TIL the lyrics of Duel of Fates (the music written by John Williams for the duel between Darth Maul, Qui-Gon and Obi-Wan) are a Sanskrit translation of a thousand year old Welsh poem, Cad Goddeu, about a wizard enchanting trees to fight in his army.
R5W5j TIL that in the '60s, ITT Corporation won $27 million in compensation from the US for damage inflicted on its share of the Focke-Wulf plant by Allied bombing during WW2
VMJap TIL In 1943, the British took a civilian's corpse, filled his lungs with water, dressed him in a military uniform, gave him fake intelligence letters, and dropped him off the coast of Spain -- all in an elaborate ruse to draw the Germans away from Sicily. It worked.