› added 10 months ago

40

TIL: During the US Civil War, a Minnesota regiment captured a confederate flag, during the Battle of Gettysburg (1863), from the Virginia army. Virginia's made many requests over the years to return the flag, even getting Congress and the President to request it and each time Minnesota has refused.

Read more twincities.com

via reddit.com

7Wx TIL: Teodore Roosevelt Jr, Teddy Roosevelt’s kid, was governor of Puerto Rico then the Philipines before WWII, then as a brigadier general landed with the first wave of troops during the invasion of Normandy beach.
VN4Q TIL Mormon prophet Joseph Smith wrote that the father of the Biblical Pharaoh was named “Egyptus”. Not only was the word “Egypt” not in use until the 16th Century, ancient Egyptians referred to the country as “Kemet”.
OGLR6 TIL that Shangri-La is a real place, after China renamed Zhongdian in 2001 after the mythical land depicted in the 1933 English novel Lost Horizon, hoping to promote tourism in the area
PYnNn TIL that a single species of spiders reproduces by a process known as “traumatic insemination”, in which the male sedates the female and proceeds to pierce her abdomen with one of its two penises to directly deposit sperm on its ovaries.
AQrw TIL the baby noises heard in “Magic Dance” in The Labyrinth were dubbed over by David Bowie himself because he felt the actual baby didn’t perform as required.