› added 6 years ago

96

TIL George Washington's great grandfather sailed a ship from England to the Colony of Virginia to trade goods when it crashed in the Potomac River. He found a nearby resident to stay with whose daughter he later married. He settled in the area and eventually became a local politician in the colony

ADkVo TIL 1998, the largest chemical company in the world (Syngenta) determined that their weedkiller Atrazine interfered with hormones; after exposure to atrazine, frogs that were genetic males became completely functioning reproductive females.
WkkrX TIL South Korea has completely Autonomous Turrets, SGR-A1 developed by Samsung, deployed along its entire 160 mile border with North Korea, making it the most militarized border in the world.
M7Qm0 TIL about bank robber and kidnapper Vassilis Palaiokostas who is known as the "Greek Robin Hood" for giving away most of his stolen millions to the poor. He escaped by helicopter from the same maximum security prison twice while serving a 25 year sentence and remains at large despite a €1m bounty.
N5b6 TIL that during the thunderous applause following his famous ‘We shall fight on the beaches’ speech to the to the House of Commons in 1940, Winston Churchill whispered to a colleague, “And we’ll fight them with the butt ends of broken beer bottles because that’s bloody well all we’ve got!”.
Y4Ox TIL that Elephants are excellent swimmers. They swim submerged underwater using their trunks as snorkels. African Elephants have been recorded swimming 48km .They can swim 6 hours nonstop then rest without sinking.