› added 8 years ago

59

TIL A mountain named “Chinaman’s Peak” was renamed to “Ha Ling Peak” because it was seen as derogatory. Ha Ling was the first to climb it and had named it himself.

Read more wikipedia.org

via ift.tt

N8rb TIL The Last Emperor of China lived until 1967, and was a communist prisoner for years tending a vegetable garden simply as “Prisoner No. 981”
XEr9R TIL Muammar Qaddafi was obsessed with Secretary of State, Condolezza Rice. During one visit he showed her a video with photos of her with various people, set to a song composed just for her called ‘Black Flower in the White House.’ When his house was raided a scrapbook of her pictures was found.
GaE5 TIL in the 1960s, the CIA spent over $20 million dollars implanting radio equipment into a cat to spy on the Kremlin. After being released outside the Soviet compound in Washington DC for it’s first mission, it was immediately struck by a taxi and died.
loOkB TIL Because Amsterdam’s soil consists of a thick layer of fen and clay, all buildings are built on wooden poles that are fixed in a sandy layer that is 11 meters deep on average. The Royal Palace at Dam Square is built on no less than 13,659 wooden poles.
X0eJ6 TIL Prehistoric monkeys migrated from Africa to South America by traversing the Atlantic Ocean on natural rafts