› added 7 years ago

489

TIL that the pledge of allegiance was created by a magazine company to sell more subscriptions

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6mJQ TIL that the wood louse (roly poly, pillbug, potato bug) is not an insect, but a crustacean. We don’t eat them like lobster or crab because they taste like urine.
kJ67W TIL about the Spiegel affair, 1962 West German political incident in which the country's Minister of Defense arrested the chief editor of a magazine for writing an article critical of the nation's military.
x6Le1 TIL a tropical storm hit Long Beach, California in 1939 which is the only cyclone to make landfall in California in the twentieth century. Such events are rare in the Pacific because cyclones feed off the energy stored in warm ocean waters but weaken in the cool waters of the California Current
Z8QwB TIL Wolverine dads often visit their young until they reach 10 weeks of age. Sometimes when the young reach 6 months of age, they may reconnect with their fathers and travel together for a time.
ADElB TIL Canadians in WW1 regularly executed prisoners and exploited truces. "[He] described the practice of lobbing tins of corned beef into a neighbouring German trench. When the Canadians started hearing happy shouts of “More! Give us more!” they then let loose with an armload of grenades."