› added 7 years ago

164

TIL of 15 year-old World War One Royal Navy officer Wenman Wykeham-Musgrave, having survived being torpedoed on three different ships within one hour, all of which sunk, swimming to each after abandonment of the last. Musgrave went on to survive the war and live a full life until 1989.

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bkBQ TIL there is a dialect of German only spoken in Texas.
XEQpP TIL that Eurasian beavers nearly went extinct but were successfully reintroduced to their original range and are now considered a "Least Concern" species
g4VX TIL Sri Lanka and India were connected by a faint 50 kilometer long sandbar that existed until 1480 when a storm broke it. People used to walk the wispy sandbar from the mainland to the large island in the Indian Ocean, losing sight of the land masses. Scientists still argue as to how it was formed.
R7Ek8 TIL: That while the kilogram is defined in terms of three fundamental physical constants, the imperial equivalent, the pound is legally defined as exactly 0.45359237 kilograms
Oo4VR TIL from the Battle of Hastings in 1066 the government of England spoke a type of French called Norman, while ordinary people spoke forms of English. Although Norman died out in England several hundred years ago, it continues in legal terms and parliament is still opened by the Queen in Norman.