› added 3 months ago

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TIL about Susie Baker King Taylor, a nurse in the Civil War for the Union army, a teacher and an author. The only black woman from the south from that era, to publish her memoirs.

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via reddit.com

b6yP0 TIL The Japanese Spider Crab can weigh 40lbs and live for 100 years. It has a leg span of 13 feet.
PYNaJ TIL of Reverend Isaac Simmons, an African-American man in Mississippi who was killed in 1944 by a white mob of 6 men who wanted his land of 270 acres Simmons and his family had owned for over 50 years. Simmons was dragged from his home, shot 3 times, and the mob cut his tongue out as well.
Z69G TIL that Shel Silverstein, who many of us know for “Where the Sidewalk Ends”, wrote Johnny Cash’s “A Boy Named Sue”
oRknW TIL that the Polish anti-communist organization Fighting Solidarity learned that the AMSAT-OSCAR 7, an apparently inactive satellite after a battery failture, had in fact remained intermittently functional, and used it surreptitiously for communication during the martial law in Poland.
1aPgX TIL that long-beaked echidnas have four-headed penises and are known as monotremes, meaning egg laying mammals. This perhaps hints at early mammalian evolution from reptiles. These guys are sadly critically endangered owing to habitat loss!