› added 11 years ago

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TIL spiral staircases in medieval times wound in a clockwise direction (from the ascender’s point of view) to place attacking swordsmen (who were most often right-handed) at a disadvantage

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b6pb7 TIL The United States built 2,710 Liberty ships between 1941 and 1945, averaging 1.5 ships a day. Liberty Ships were quick simple cheap cargo ships needed for the mass transport of supplies. The ships were lightly armed but the SS Stephen Hopkins manged to fight a cargo raider to mutual destruction.
awVxL TIL a seed that was found in 32,000 year old permafrost germinated
R7Np8 TIL Tibor Rubin survived the Holocaust, fought for the US Army during the Korean War, became a POW, and had to wait 55 years to receive his Medal of Honor, all because his sergeant was an anti-Semite.
nWnBB TIL that Edward Teller, the father of the hydrogen bomb, once proposed a 10 gigaton bomb. It would have been 670,000x stronger than the bomb dropped on Hiroshima, and 200x stronger than the Tsar Bomba, the largest bomb ever created. It's estimated to have been able to set all of France on fire.
LkkQ TIL: There is a $20,000 home theater device offered by Prima Cinema, which automatically sends Hollywood films to customers’ home systems the day they premiere.