› added 4 years ago

354

TIL of Stanley Hollis, the only British soldier to earn a Victoria cross medal for his actions on dday. He fought on multiple fronts during the war, killed hundreds of enemy troops, took out a tiger tank single-handed and on dday took out 2 pill boxes and captured multiple prisoners single-handed.

Read more thehistorypress.co.uk

via reddit.com

jvkQ TIL: Darwin did NOT coin the phrase “Survival of the fittest”; it originated in Spencer’s “The Principles of Biology” (1864–7, 1: 444–5)
OgaL TIL that 90% of polled Native Americans have no problem with the “Redskins” sports team nickname.
VBQOp TIL 1934's "It Happened One Night" inspired characteristics of Bugs Bunny. There is a scene in which Clark Gable's character is continuously called "Doc," a scene in which he eats carrots while talking quickly with his mouth full, and an imaginary character named "Bugs Dooley" is mentioned.
oRa8r TIL Dr. Karl Kruszelnicki designed an experiment after a nurse asked if her farts contaminated an operating theatre. He found that while gas from a subject with his pants down caused bacteria to sprout on Petri dishes, it did not when he was fully clothed, suggesting that clothing acts as a filter.
9YJxp TIL The British inventor of the quicksort algorithm, Sir Tony Hoare, also created the null reference and called it his "billion-dollar mistake ... has led to innumerable errors, vulnerabilities, and system crashes ... probably caused a billion dollars of pain and damage in the last forty years".