› added 9 years ago

155

TIL That the word “Idaho” is completely meaningless. The lobbyist who suggested the name lied about it being a Shoshone word for “gem of the mountains” and congress didn’t bother verifying the claim.

Read more visitidaho.org

via reddit.com

m1wDo TIL about the Maritime response following the September 11 attacks, which was the largest sea evacuation in world history. Rescuing 500,000 people in 9 hours
nBLB TIL During the 1996 Vendee Globe, a solo round the world boat race, Pete Goss gave up his chance of winning and despite being 1400 miles from land turned 160 miles back into a storm in order to save the life of another competitor.
PYE0V TIL a Harvard professor suggested implanting launch codes inside a human volunteer close to their heart so the president would have to kill an innocent person in order to fire nuclear weapons.
NZ9M TIL that the original surveyors of Mount Everest lied and added 2 feet to its height to make it 29,002 feet, because they didn’t think people would believe them if they said it was really 29,000 feet high.
LAkd TIL Author J.D. Salinger stormed the beaches of Normandy on D-Day and carried a work in progress with him which would later become “Catcher in the Rye”