› added 13 years ago

196

TIL that John Smith, before Jamestown, was a trader, pirate, slave, mercenary, knight and had won three duels. He had been to (at least) modern day Romania, Hungary, Turkey, Ukraine, Russia, Poland, Spain, North Africa, England and the Americas all by the age of 27.

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N9vb TIL Huichol Indian men tie ropes around their testicles when their wives are giving birth. When she feels a painful contraction, she tugs on the rope so her husband will share some of the pain as part of their child’s entrance into the world.
gY1A TIL That in 1860 an Anglo-French expedition force burned and sacked the Old Summer Palace in China, it covered an area of 3.5 square kilometres (860 acres), almost five times the size of the Forbidden City grounds and eight times the size of the Vatican City.
l70EN TIL during WW2 the US and Canada invaded a Japanese-held Alaskan island with more than 35,000 men. After more than 300 casualties and the near sinking of the destroyer USS Abner Read from traps, mines, and friendly fire; they realised there were no Japanese on the island.
jNBxQ TIL about Dreamweaver, a 2011 project by Gallant Lab at UCB. Participants watched movie clips, and researchers were then able to reconstruct low-resolution videos of what they were viewing using only their brain activity. This could lead to technology enabling us to video record our dreams.
1aPpP TIL there are prehistoric ritual caves that were visited for more than 10.000 years, making them by far the longest lasting religious temples ever