› added 4 years ago

165

TIL the eponymous whale of Moby Dick was partly inspired by a real whale named Mocha Dick.

Read more whalingmuseum.org

via reddit.com

NP86 TIL that the Packard plant in Detroit is the largest abandoned industrial facility in the world.
oB8KR TIL the first dentist who used a common organic solvent we now call "ether" as an anesthetic, William Morton, was castigated by the 18th-century medical community when he tried to patent it/profit from it.
eAL TIL a kamikaze pilot who struck the USS Missouri during WWII was given a military burial at sea with full honors after the captain decided the young Japanese pilot had done his job to the best of his ability. The dent in the side of the ship remains to this day.
GY61G TIL that people live inside the Grand Canyon. Supai Village, the capital of the Havasupai Indian Reservation, boasts a population of a couple of hundred residents, is considered the most remote community in the continental US, and is the only place where mail is delivered and carried out by mule.
p8dkb TIL of Igbo Ora, a town in Nigeria known as the “twins capital of the world”. It’s in the south west part of Nigeria which has a documented 50 sets of twins born out of every 1,000 births. Locals say it is due to an okra leaf they eat. One woman says it’s responsible for her having 8 pairs of twins.