› added 5 years ago

67

TIL that during World War I, Captain Sir Mansfield George Smith-Cumming's Secret Intelligence Service agents adopted the motto 'Every man his own stylo', after discovering that they could use semen as invisible ink.

Read more wikipedia.org

via reddit.com

8aWba TIL that horses evolved on the great plains of North America. They migrated across the Bering land bridge to Asia, and all remaining horses died out in America. When the Spanish brought horses with them in the 16th century, they were returning them to their native ranges.
neMRr TIL DHL has been aquired by the Deutsche Post (German Federal Post Service) in 2002, after slowly buying up shares since 1998 and gaining controlling interest in 2001. DHL has since been used as the Express delivery service of the Deutsche Post.
VrnQ TIL Christine Lagarde, Managing Director of the IMF, once walked out of a job interview at the biggest law firm in Paris. “I was told I should never expect to make partnership because I was a woman. I thought to myself: ‘You don’t deserve me, I’m going…why would I work with that kind of attitude?”
ORBL TIL the Black Death arrived in Norway on a ghost ship that just so happened become beached near a major port. Even tho all the crew had died the surviving rats and flees managed to spread the disease throughout the country and later to Sweeden and Russia.
PwRg TIL lions are called “king of the jungle” because “jungle” derives from a Hindi word meaning “uninhabited place”. They typically live in savannas and grasslands.