› added 6 months ago

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TIL of Wenman Wykeham-Musgrave, a Royal Navy officer who was on three different ships that were torpedoed... all on the same day

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jEWR TIL that Europeans traditionally swam the breaststroke, while Native Americans swam the front crawl. When two Native Americans won an 1844 swimming competition in England, newspapers criticized their barbaric, “un-European” form. Europeans refused to use the faster front crawl for decades.
kJorm TIL that after Sam Cooke sang "A Change is Gonna Come" on The Tonight Show (Feb 7, 1964), the network lost the only recording of the performance. Cooke elected never to perform it again in his lifetime (he was murdered in Dec of '64), due to the song's complexity and ominous nature.
Z8PmY TIL about Elizabeth Sugrue, Irelands only female executioner. Sentenced to death, she volunteered to hang the other prisoners in exchange for her life, as the local hangman was ill on that day. Her offer was accepted, and she was kept for the job.
Lk9Y0 TIL about Starlite, an enigmatic material of unknown composition that can, among other things: keep an egg cool after it was blowtorched for 5 minutes, ignore a plasma cutter capable of cutting a foot and a half of steel, and has had its properties verified by several governmental entities.
wLEQ7 TIL: In 1976, the Chicago Sun-Times bought a bar so they could expose the corruption of city inspectors extracting bribes from local businesses.