› added 12 years ago

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TIL male water striders blackmail females into having sex by threatening to call predators

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9Y1m7 TIL of how the U.S. Government set up the first bank for "newly emancipated Black communities" after the Civil War; but in the 1870s, Henry Cooke & Ulysses S. Grant got away with scamming the Freedman's Bank out of $75,000 ($1.77M in 2020), crippling the bank into bankruptcy...
d8v0B TIL on 1816, after the French frigate ran aground the coast of Mauritania, 150 passengers and sailors went on a raft. They were found 15 days later, only 15 survived, the rest dying from drowning, hunger and violence from other survivors. Most had to eat human flesh to survive
Enox TIL that John D. Rockefeller’s net worth, translated into today’s dollars, would be up to $663 billion, or almost 10x the worth of today’s richest man
p8dlZ TIL The great grandson of China's first President didn't learn about him until he was 17 when he had to do a term paper and found over 1,600 books on Sun Yat-Sen, "The Father of Modern China". His grandparents and parents never told him about politics so he could grow up as a normal child
e0gXg TIL that in 1978, and architecture student discovered the Citigroup Center in NYC was susceptible to strong winds due to it being on stilts. Renovations to address the issue were done during a newspaper strike at night while employees were at home. This work was largely unkown unknown until 1995!