› added 5 years ago

92

TIL about Wreckhouse Wind Warnings, which are only issued for one specific area of Newfoundland and Labrador.

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nWnDG TIL that less than two weeks after the French surrender in WWII, the British attacked a French naval base to prevent Germany from using the ships. Over 1,200 died and multiple ships were destroyed or damaged. Vichy France retaliated by bombing Gibraltar and cutting off diplomatic relations.
j6ROj TIL that the play that Abraham Lincoln was attending when John Wilkes Booth was assassinated was called "Our American Cousin", a widely-popular comedy. Booth timed his shooting with the play's funniest moment to hide the sound of the shot.
GAQPN TIL that during the second Rocky Marciano Vs Ezzard Charles boxing match, Charles split Marciano’s nose in half and the fight would have soon be stopped had Marciano not managed a KO of Charles.
16klV TIL that "U and non-U English" was a British theory of dialects in the 1950s that noted that the aspiring middle classes actually used "more refined" language than the upper classes - like "pardon?" instead of "what?", and to "pass on" instead of to "die"
W46X TIL African giant pouched rats are trained to detect tuberculosis, which is the world’s second most fatal infectious disease. Although they currently are not an accepted standalone diagnostic tool, one rat can evaluate more samples in 10 minutes than a lab technician can evaluate in 1 day.