› added 9 years ago

208

TIL: Six soldiers who fought in the American Revolution survived into the age of photography, 83 years after the British surrender

Read more earlyamerica.com

via reddit.com

d8ZG7 TIL Ötzi, the european mummy, had 61 tattoos, which are considered to be the oldest tattoos in the world
woYxJ TIL that Canada's Stay Alert, Stay Safe campaign, featuring Canada's answer to McGruff the Crime Dog, Bert and Gert the Bunnies, got started because the creator's daughter was the victim of a deadly kidnapping, like with Adam Walsh and Code Adam
OovWY TIL: The world's smallest 'snowman' is only 2.7μm (micrometres) tall (in comparison a human hair is 75μm). To create it a scientist, Todd Simpson from Western University, stacked 3 tiny silica spheres, added a nose and arms made of platinum and cut the eyes and mouth with a focused ion beam.
D1gGV TIL in WWII, weather reports were censored to prevent enemy submarines from learning about conditions. A football game in Chicago was so covered in fog that the radio announcer couldn’t see the field, but afterwards he was officially thanked for never using the word “fog” or mentioning the weather.
1an0X TIL that JRR Tolkien wrote the Lord of The Rings while he was a visiting English professor at the university in Galway, Ireland. It’s widely believed that the nearby Burren region influenced his depiction of Middle Earth and that “Gollum” was named after a cave in the region called “Poll na gColm”