› added 6 months ago

23

TIL Francis Bacon died of pneumonia he got after stuffing a fowl with snow to prove that the meat can be preserved frozen.

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vP16D TIL that the given (first) name of Admiral Isoroku Yamamoto (the Japanese Admiral who devised the attack on Pearl Harbor and much of Japan's success in the first part WWII) means the number "56" - his father's age when Isoroku was born.
5V6k TIL that if Japan had waited about a week to bomb Pearl Harbor, there could have been a new state called Jefferson in the mountainous region of Northern California and Southern Oregon.
mxdVv TIL of Girgori Perelman, the only person in history to have solved one of the seven Millennium Prize Problems. After solving the Poincaré conjecture Perelman was offered the Field's Medal and $1 million prize money, he declined them both.
wXdo TIL the Naval Investigative Service knew the term “Friend of Dorothy” referred to gay men, but misunderstood the history of the phrase and launched an investigation to find this woman named “Dorothy” who they believed was at the centre of a ring of gay military personnel.
oBJxK TIL the Apollo astronauts could not get life insurance, so they signed hundreds of envelopes as memorabilia in the event of their death.