› added 8 years ago

95

TIL Braille was based on a tactile military code called night writing, developed in response to Napoleon’s demand for a means for soldiers to communicate silently at night and without a light source. It proved to be too difficult for soldiers to recognize by touch, and was rejected by the military

Read more wikipedia.org

via ift.tt

E1K57 TIL of the Schulze-Boysens, a married couple who were members of the German high society. They were also anti-Nazi activists who formed a resistance group known as the Red Orchestra. They were caught and executed in 1942 but the Red Orchestra continued throughout the war as an espionage network.
nWJZ9 TIL that Pope Paul II supposedly died from indigestion caused by eating melon in excess, or by being sodomised by a page boy
l771V TIL the Torrent duck lives on fast-flowing mountain rivers and whitewater rapids. The ducks nest in rocky coves next to the waterfalls, and the, very buoyant, ducklings quickly figure out to avoid flowing downstream by resting in the eddies in front of boulders.
kOAW5 TIL - 30 yeas ago today (May 20, 89) a Soviet pilot baked a cake with sleeping pills and fed it to his squadron. While they were asleep he cut the alarm, wrestled with the guard on duty, took control of a Mig-29 and flew it to Turkey. He died in a Soviet Yak52 near Seattle during test flight in 2001
mxnRp TIL: all raindrops have a speck of dirt inside them. Raindrops can only form when they have something to condense on to, thus the need for a particle of dirt.