› added 7 years ago

90

TIL about smokejumpers, specialized firefighters who parachute in remote areas to fight early fires, with little to no ground support

Read more wikipedia.org

via reddit.com

nelNB TIL there is a Catholic Saint who is credited with the miracle of making a pregnant nun's fetus disappear "to preserve her chastity."
rZeo TIL that South Africa manufactured large quantities of MDMA and deployed it for crowd control during the apartheid era
kJrdg TIL the Wheeling, West Virginia Suspension Bridge over the Ohio River was built in 1851 to accommodate horse and buggy crossings. For almost 170 years is was able to handle the changing vehicle traffic until a tour bus in 2019 ignored multiple warnings and got stuck under a height barrier.
ejK4 TIL Thomas Baker was wounded and didn’t want to get help. Instead, he was given a pistol with 8 bullets. Later, around his dead body were 8 dead enemies and an empty pistol. He received a Medal of Honor posthumously.
9wv4D TIL there are over 700 quintillion planets in the universe