› added 6 years ago

251

TIL the first female doctor in Britain spent 56 years disguised as Dr. James Barry; a male Royal British Army surgeon. She was the first person to perform a successful C-section in British history and her true identity was only discovered after she rose to the rank of “Inspector General.”

Read more atlasobscura.com

via reddit.com

9YgLm TIL Abraham Lincoln's assassination helped to popularize travel by train due to the amount of press and exposure Lincoln's funeral train received. Up until then, most Americans had never seen a passenger train.
69LY TIL: Microsoft just updated their terms and specifically disallowed monetization of gameplay videos on YouTube
jNnGR TIL about the moon landing’s ‘Human Computers’. Who were a group of women, who held math and science degrees, and were responsible for managing the moon landing’s incredibly complex calculations. They also did it real-time, by written hand, and were faster than any technology available before 1970.
PYbrn TIL that many European maps during the Middle Ages had the East on top instead of the North, thus "to orient" meant to align the map to the East, the Orient.
wWno TIL Sarah Jessica Parker had a no nudity contract clause while working on “Sex and the City.” She was the only one of the four leading actresses not to do nude scenes.