› added 7 years ago

282

TIL that Robert Smalls who born into slavery stole a confederate military ship, disguised himself as a captain, used a secret code book and hand signals to pass Confederate guard ships, rescued slaves and families, worked as military advisor to the union until war ends and ran for Congress and won.

Read more wikipedia.org

via reddit.com

nWG7B TIL "feeling that something is wet is quite a feat because our skin does not have receptors that sense wetness"
699OJ TIL that Leonardo da Vinci invented the first glider with directional commands for the pilot. Many attempts have been made to build or model the original idea of Leonardo, however the actual flight potentialities are still unclear. This is last interpretation from the original sketch.
mPKx TIL that Billy Gumboots the goat, president of the small NZ town of Whangamomona from 1999 to 2001, was elected after he ate the opponent candidates’ ballot papers and died in office 18 months later. Tai the Poodle was then elected, but retired after less than a year due to an assassination attempt.
dDEXr TIL that the BGP, the protocol responsible for routing information across the internet is known as the three-napkin protocol because it was originally sketched out on the back of "three ketchup-stained napkins"
x6rJk TIL that Napoleon Bonaparte wasn’t actually as short as many people believe? The idea that he was extremely short comes from a measurement conversion error between the French and British systems. In reality, he was about 1.69 m (5'7"), which was an average height for his time.