› added 12 years ago

222

TIL the wheel was patented in 2001

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via reddit.com

yQAWV TIL that during the Mexican-American war, a battalion made up of mostly Irishmen called "St Patrick's Battalion" fought against the Americans, and when caught, were executed, making it the largest mass execution in United States history
m1lpv TIL that the first person to decipher an extinct language was the French scholar Jean-Jacques Barthélemy, who deciphered the Palmyrene alphabet in 1754. He managed to do so literally overnight by studying bilingual inscriptions.
Z8jMa TIL about the Rambutan, a hairy fruit, appropriately called the hair fruit in Malay and the messy hair fruit in Vietnamese.
m1jkv TIL about US Navy gunner Loyce Deen. Killed while flying, his body was too mangled to remove from the Avenger torpedo bomber he was in. The ship's crew covered the body and buried Deen at sea, using the Avenger as his coffin. It's the only known burial at sea involving an aircraft as tomb.
R7BN8 TIL that there is a type of wild dog that does not breed with other dogs. It has sharp claws, climbs trees, hunts cobras, and is 36,000 years old.