› added 2 years ago

155

TIL in 1761 after a shipwreck, 60 slaves were abandoned on an island with the promise of being rescued. They were later forgotten. 15 years later they managed to rescue the remaining survivors: 7 women and an 8 month old baby. They managed to keep a fire burning for 15 years.

Read more amusingplanet.com

via reddit.com

nWpY7 TIL The policeman John Parker, who was assigned to guard the entrance to Lincoln’s box at Fords Theater, was not immediately fired after he was assassinated. He was even assigned to guard Mary Todd Lincoln afterwards, though she quickly dismissed him. He was only fired in 1868 for sleeping on duty.
DPOp TIL that Dwight D. “Ike” Eisenhower, after serving two terms as President of the United States, sought and received his reinstatement as a General of the Army. Ike believed that history would hardly remember his service as President, but would never forget that he commanded the D-day invasion.
O5AL TIL condoms can hold up to 40 liters of air, or 9 gallons of water
9Yoop TIL psilocybin, the psychoactive chemical in magic mushrooms (psilocybin mushrooms), is being researched as a potential treatment for anxiety and depression in people with cancer diagnoses, for alcohol use disorder, and for migraines and cluster headaches.
wLKbY TIL that in the nation of Papua New Guinea (population 8 million) there are 820 different spoken languages (complete languages, not dialects), which belong to 60 language families as different from each other as French and Chinese