› added 2 years ago

62

TIL the Qing dynasty of China forced their male subjects to wear a hairstyle called the Queue. It featured a long braid and a shaved front of the head. Cutting the queue became seen as a symbol of rebellion against the empire.

Read more wikipedia.org

via reddit.com

xLLo TIL In Nordic mythology, Ratatoskr was a squirrel whose sole job was to carry (usually insulting) messages between a great eagle and a dragon at opposite ends of Yggdrasil, the World Tree
QNNrk TIL one of the unifiers of Japan, Toyotomi Hideyoshi, once built an entire castle in secret near a castle he had put under siege. After 80 days, he had the trees covering it cut down, making it seem like a castle had sprung up overnight. His enemies surrendered shortly thereafter.
xxQb TIL George Washington’s mother was alive to see George Washington win the revolutionary war and see him become the nation’s first president. She was consistently dissatisfied with her son and even petitioned Virginia for a pension because of claimed neglect.She was also rumored to be a loyalist.
wJwE TIL a US Navy POW blinked the word ‘torture’ in morse code during a forced TV interview in North Vietnam to signal his conditions to the Office of Naval Intelligence
D1Y7g TIL of the most rural post office in the US; the Supai Post Office is at the bottom of the Grand Canyon and is serviced by a mule train that takes 2.5 hours to reach it. It services the Havasupai reservation and demonstrates the obligation of the US Postal System to service every community.