› added 1 year ago

45

TIL U-570 was a WW2 German U-boat that achieved the unusual distinction of surrendering to an aircraft when a British Hudson Bomber struck her with depth charges in 1941. She was then commissioned into the Royal Navy as the HMS Graph until being decommissioned and wrecked off Scotland in 1944.

Read more wikipedia.org

via reddit.com

KAeQ TIL a 9 year old boy ran away from home to fight in the Civil War. The army adopted him as their drummer boy, being too young to be a soldier. At age 11, he became the youngest noncommissioned officer in Army history, and decades later he retired as the last veteran of the civil war on active duty.
7r5X7 TIL that in 1993, scientist Cesare Emiliani proposed switching the Gregorian calendar to the Holocene calendar which would account for the entirety of human civilization, starting 12,000 years ago at Year 0. Making the current year 12021 HE (Human Era).
E1EOp TIL a beaver "named ‘Geronimo,' was dropped again and again" by parachute to test a radical beaver relocation plan. Geronimo's success led to the relocation of 76 beavers via parachute. Geronimo had priority reservation on the first ship into the hinterland, and three young females went with him.
69mLW TIL Linnaeus binomial classification was preceded by Clerck's and the first animal to get binomial name was an orb-weaving spider Araneus angulatus
xVyb1 TIL that in Japan there are trains that bark like dogs to scare deer that come to lick the rails to get iron