› added 6 years ago

206

TIL about Basil Zaharoff, He sold the Greek government a submarine, then told the Turkish government that the Greeks had a submarine, Turkey then bought 2 submarines. He then told the same to the Russian government who later bought 2 submarines as well. None of the submarines worked.

Read more wikipedia.org

via reddit.com

E7Qo TIL that gingko trees are so hardy that six are known to have survived the atom bomb and are still growing in Hiroshima—they also smell like barf.
nE0Y TIL Steffi Graf is the only tennis player to complete a Golden Slam, where one wins all four majors and the Olympic Gold medal in one year.
R5kr8 TIL Almost 300 birds were shot at the 1900 Summer Olympics. This was the only Olympic Game to use live animals as targets.
R5gYj TIL according to folklore, the amount of black on a woolly bear caterpillar in autumn varies proportionately with the severity of the coming winter in the area the caterpillar is found. The longer the woolly bear's black bands, the longer, colder, snowier, and more severe the winter will be.
698gY TIL about the Doorway Effect, where the simple act of walking through a doorway (both physical and virtual) can cause us to forget what we were just doing.