› added 11 years ago

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TIL the tradition of “women and children first” protocol is a legacy from the Birkenhead, a ship that ran into a dangerous reef, and whose soldiers famously stood firm allowing the women and children to board the boats safely as there were not enough serviceable lifeboats for all the passengers.

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MenLB TIL that if February, Germany charged a 95 year old woman with 10,000 counts of aiding and abetting murder because she was a stenographer for a SS officer at a concentration camp when she was 17. She lives in a nursing home, but if the case goes to trial, she will be tried in juvenile court.
Ybv TIL the Amazon pours so much water into the Atlantic that freshwater can be found so far offshore that there isn’t any land in sight.
neLLW TIL that around 30 per cent all the adaptive mutations in our genome – a third of human evolution – has been in response to viruses.
Ko06 TIL in 1897, a newlywed woman was found dead in her home. Although her death was attributed to natural causes, her mother’s insistence that she had been visited by the woman’s ghost compelled authorities to reopen the case, at which time an autopsy revealed the woman had suffered a broken neck.
m6GR TIL that Mark Twain disliked Jane Austen’s work enough to say “every time I read ‘Pride and Prejudice’ I want to dig her up and beat her over the skull with her own shin-bone”