› added 10 years ago

91

TIL in 1930 the US government barred and returned any mail from Spain bearing a new set of stamps, which showed a world-famous painting of a naked woman

Read more wikipedia.org

via reddit.com

E1QWp TIL Sweden banned hunting brown bear mothers who are still with her cubs. Mother bears have now evolved to care for their cubs an additional year.
XQaP TIL the US warned Japanese citizens at least 5 days in advance of the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. They dropped millions of leaflets and issued radio broadcasts urging citizens to flee.
ZpwbG TIL the Colorado River doesn’t make it to the ocean anymore — since 1960
4XN7J TIL the National Trust implores us to stop urinating in a toilet, in order to save the water used in flushing, and instead wee onto compost heaps, which speeds up the chemical process of decomposition, making it a better fertiliser to grow vegetables and save even more energy in reducing food miles.
K1R6 TIL that Belgian fort Eben-Emael was thought to be impregnable before WW2. The world’s largest fortress was designed to stop a German invasion and take months to break. It was so large … that in May 1940 the Luftwaffe landed gliders on its roof, and captured Eben-Emael from the top in 30 hours.