› added 10 years ago

75

TIL that in 1994, when the Ku Klux Klan applied to sponsor a portion of United States Interstate 55 in Missouri which allowed them to have signs stating the sponsorship, since the state could not legally refuse it, the Missouri legislature voted to name the highway section the “Rosa Parks Highway”.

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7rnwM TIL that when his friend Hephaestion died, Alexander the Great held a hugely expensive funeral that it has been estimated to have cost the modern equivalent of two billion dollars
gr5Zy TIL that the creator and first admiral of the Argentine navy was an Irishman. William Brown is considered a national hero in Argentina, with more than 1,200 streets named after him.
l7jBA TIL that despite being ubiquitous throughout the Roman world for centuries and appearing in sculptures and friezes across the empire, we don't know what the Romans called the armor they wore in battle. 16th century scholars gave it the name lorica segmentata.
YBoW TIL that a British tail gunner in WWII jumped out of a plane without a parachute rather than burn to death. He fell 18,000 feet and survived. He was captured and questioned by the Gestapo. They were so impressed, they issued him a certificate verifying the story.
0dpZp TIL that tetrodotoxin (TTX), which makes pufferfish poisonous, may not be made by the pufferfish themselves. TTX is produced by marine bacteria in the natural pufferfish food chain, and pufferfish fed TTX-free diets become non-toxic. When TTX is re-introduced to the fish, they become toxic again.