› added 3 years ago

115

TIL the US Army acquired 75 camels from abroad after Congress appropriated $30,000 in 1855 for the procurement of camels for military purposes. The camels were determined to be well suited for hauling supplies between military outposts in arid regions. They were subsequently all auctioned off.

Read more wikipedia.org

via reddit.com

aN0A TIL that the term “scot-free” was actually absorbed into English from the Norse word “skattefri”, which means “without tax”.
4aQR TIL The Great White Shark is food for Killer Whales, and that the smell of one of their own, dead in the water, will rapidly drive all of the GW Sharks in the area deep into the ocean and far away from land for the rest of the year.
m1YDP TIL that spaghettification is when a star gets sucked into a black hole. The gravitational pull can shred the star into thin streams of material like spaghetti.
JP1 TIL that General Eisenhower ordered every citizen Gotha, Germany to tour the concentration camp Ohrdruf (a subcamp of Buchenwald). After the mayor of the town and his wife did so, they went home and hanged themselves (#80)
VMYdp TIL German parents not allowed to name their child Lucifer