› added 2 months ago

28

TIL an amateur historian in Rhode Island unearthed an Arabic coin believed to be part of the most profitable act of piracy in history - the 1695 capture of an Indian fleet and treasure by the English pirate Henry Every, estimated to by worth $400 million in today's money.

e0baD TIL that Led Zeppelin may have played at the Wheaton Youth Center in Maryland, but with no known recordings, photographs, or any other physical evidence that the concert took place, it has turned into something of an urban legend.
WR8L TIL: in 1945 a group of Soviet school children presented a US Ambassador with a carved US Seal as a gesture of friendship. It hung in his office for 7 years before discovering it contained a listening device.
m1L5E TIL in the 1906 book 'John Dough and the Cherub' the titular Cherub was a child of indeterminate gender; the editors created a contest to guess the gender and second place argued girl as "if it had been a boy he would have eaten the ginger-bread man at once whether it agreed with him or not"
gKoA TIL According to a 2007 study from researchers at the University of Copenhagen; All blue eyed people can be traced back to one person who lived near the Black Sea 6,000 to 10,000 years ago.
XEkpj TIL William Hare and William Burke ran a boardinghouse where they murdered the tenants and sold the bodies to anatomy schools for dissections. After murdering 16 people and being detained, Hare confessed and was offered immunity. Burke was sentenced to hang and his corpse was publicly dissected.