› added 10 years ago

109

TIL maintain morale, WWI wartime censors blocked early reports of the 1918 Influenza epidemic in their countries. However, papers were free to report the epidemic’s effects in neutral Spain, creating a false impression of Spain as especially hard hit—thus the pandemic’s nickname, the Spanish flu.

Read more m.wikipedia.org

via reddit.com

e0lwL TIL that instead of saying “the cat’s pyjamas” or “the bee’s knees”, the French say “the baby Jesus in velvet shorts”
npVb TiL that, during the Iranian Embassy Siege, when given the choice of who from their number would be released, the hostages chose a man whose loud snoring was keeping them awake
OoGD1 TIL During the California Gold Rush a Chinese laundry man named John-John washed enough gold dust out of pants cuffs and shirttails of miners to set himself up for life.
0wgmy TIL in 1848, the first bridge built over Niagara Falls was started with a kite competition. A boy flew a kite across to the river to the opposite bank. The line he used carried larger and larger cables across the river used to start construction of the bridge
W7oPB TIL a US law firm set up honeypots on torrent-sharing site The Pirate Bay and then sued people who downloaded their torrents. The matter reached the FBI and the pirate site accepted to collaborate with the feds resulting in the crooked lawyers getting jail time.