› added 3 months ago

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TIL that the threat from Algeria was the reason the U.S. Navy was founded. In 1794, the U.S. Congress passed the Naval Act, authorizing the construction of six frigates, including the USS George Washington. This decision was largely driven by the need to protect American merchant ships from Algiers.

Read more ussconstitutionmuseum.org

via reddit.com

noxP TIL there is a charity that buys up mortgages that have gone to collection for pennies on the dollar, then frees the homeowners of the debt. They’ve erased more than $14M so far!
KOBNR TIL that Robert Morris, namesake of Robert Morris University, engaged in the trans-Atlantic slave trade and personally owned several slaves.
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.
XErBR TIL of Orestes Lorenzo, a Cuban fighter pilot who defected to the US. He flew to Florida in a MiG-23 and requested his family join him, when his family were banned from leaving Cuba he raised money to buy a plane. He then flew back to Cuba, landed on a highway an bought his family back himself.
4law TIL that 12,000 bears are farmed for their bile in Asia which is used in traditional Chinese medicine and generates $2bn per year. Farming always involves surgery on the bears to insert a catheter or to cut a hole through the abdomen by which the bile leaks. Bear bile has no medicinal effect.