› added 5 years ago

85

TIL of Tek Sing often referred to as "Titanic of the East". Happening 90 years before the Titanic went down, the Tek Sing was overloaded with cargo and also carried 1,600 emigrants, akin to the Titanic they were low on lifeboats from the start. Less than 190 people were rescued.

Read more wikipedia.org

via reddit.com

N7766 TIL Shel Silverstein wrote for Playboy, and published books of adult "erotica," in his unique style. I discovered this from a random purchase in a used book store, picking up "Different Dances." Album pics in the comments.
WknP9 TIL: Franklin Roosevelt was incredibly interested in the “Oak Island Mystery” and even invested money into an excavation effort at the age of 27.
O106 TIL that the bumper to bumper traffic in much of New York is a legacy of one racist man who used billions of public infrastructure dollars to build ill-conceived highways in order to segregate and disenfranchise neighborhoods, while evicting over 250,000 of the city’s poor.
QNQEk TIL about Edward Brooke, the first black person to be directly elected to the Senate when he was elected in 1966, serving two terms. A liberal Republican, Brooke co-wrote the 1968 Civil Rights Act and was the first Republican Senator to call for Nixon's resignation during Watergate.
kNx4 TIL there’s a hidden room behind Lincoln’s hairline at Mount Rushmore. The artist wanted it to be his own special signature on the monument, a room where visitors could learn about American history and a place to display busts of famous Americans and key documents like the Constitution.