› added 10 months ago

36

TIL that Iceland and the UK directly fought against each other in the "Cod Wars" intermittently from the 1950s to the 1970s. This was despite both states being members of NATO.

Read more wikipedia.org

via reddit.com

Me9YV TIL before the invention of the at home Pregnancy test in the 70s, doctors would inject a woman’s urine into rats and if the rat had ovulated, it was the sign of a positive pregnancy test
LkQWv It’s a logical question. After all, it would be handy if every time the Hubble Space Telescope went on the fritz, an astronaut could reach out the window of the space station and give it a whack. Unfortunately, not only is that setup nearly impossible, being docked to the ISS would impair Hubble’s performance.
6E6Nw TIL of Henry “Box” Brown. A slave who escaped the slave state by mailing himself in a 3 foot X 2 foot X 8 inches deep box from Virginia to Philadelphia. The journey took 27 hours and he had a little water and some biscuits as food. Brown became a prolific Anti Slavery speaker
gDk4 TIL the world’s longest-lasting light bulb has been working for at least 114 years. It was first installed in 1901 and it is maintained by the Livermore-Pleasanton Police Department
68GW TIL that upon his death, pirate Olivier Levasseur had tossed a cryptogram into a crowd and told them if they could figure out the message, his treasure (now valued at $200,000,000) would be theirs, a treasure that to this day has never been found.