› added 12 years ago

88

TIL that during the height of the Cuban Missile Crisis, a Russian submarine ordered a nuclear bomb to be launched against America thinking war had broken out on the surface, but was stopped by one man, single-handedly preventing nuclear war

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eKGL TIL the phrase “I’ll be a monkey’s uncle” originally comes from people expressing anti-darwinian sentiments.
YpKjW TIL Võ Nguyên Giáp, a general in the Vietnam People's Army, had no direct military training & was a history teacher at a French-speaking academy. He would later earn the moniker "Red Napoleon" by some Western sources. He has been called one of the greatest military strategists of the 20th century
M6ka TIL there is a tower made out of skulls in Serbia
nN07 TIL Andrew Jackson, in a duel, gave his opponent a free shot. Hit in the chest, he returned fire, killing the man. Later said “if he had shot me through the brain, I should still have killed him.”
6pZY TIL there are 365 beads in a military dog chain and 52 on the small chain, used for captured personal to keep track of the days and weeks.