› added 6 days ago

3

TIL the Cuyahoga River was so badly polluted by companies spilling oil on it that the river repeatedly burned, the last time was in 1969, sparking an environmentalist movement to clean up the river.

Read more clevelandhistorical.org

via reddit.com

mxn1O TIL that during the 1918 flu pandemic the Governor of American Samoa John Martin Poyer quarantined the territory. American Samoa was one of the few places in the world to not suffer any flu deaths.
4O8b TIL that Iceland gets 100% of its energy from renewable sources.
9YYZ6 TIL that in 1914, four empires claimed to be successors to the Roman Empire; the German Empire, Russian Empire, Ottoman Empire and Italian Empire. All of them collapsed because of WW1 except for the Italian Empire, leaving them as the only empire to claim succession from the Roman Empire.
Grej TIL During WWII, the NFL lost a lot of players because they left for military service. As a result, by the 1943 NFL season, the Philadelphia Eagles and Pittsburgh Steelers were forced to merge into one team called the Pennsylvania Steagles.
NX5NM TIL that it's actually possible to communicate with plants