› added 5 years ago

72

TIL that in 1942, the HNLMS Abraham Crijnssen, a Dutch minesweeper based in the Netherlands East Indies, successfully disguised itself as a tropical island for several weeks in order to evade Japanese patrols, while withdrawing towards Australia after Allied setbacks in the region during the war.

Read more wikipedia.org

via reddit.com

Xx9R TIL that a US submarine placed a wire tap on Russian undersea cables to monitor secret military communications during the Cold War, and only found the cable after a week of searching because of a sign on the shore saying “Cable Here. Do Not Anchor.”
0d05y TIL of the 'Azolla event', a situation in which a species of floating fern covered the Arctic Ocean ~49 million years ago; scientists suspect the fern grew so aggressively that it removed enough CO2 from the atmosphere to initiate a global ice age
1a7b7 TIL that the shaka or 'hang loose' gesture originated when a Hawaiian named Hamana Kalili lost his three middle fingers in a sugar mill accident
mJvM TIL That coffee was once considered the Devil’s drink by the Catholic church… Until 1603 when Pope Clement VIII tasted it and gave it Papal approval
1aPkd TIL: Archaeologist Alexander Peev was executed by firing squad in 1943 on suspicion of sending a coded message to the Soviet Union. It was actually an ancient inscription he wanted Russian archaeologists to help him interpret. The text remains undeciphered.