› added 9 years ago

114

TIL Margaret Garner, a slave that escaped to Cincinatti, killed her own daughter with a butcher knife, wounded her other children, and tried to commit suicide rather when government officials tried to arrest her to return them to slavery

Read more wikipedia.org

via reddit.com

Me0KV TIL about Zakynthos, a Greek island that hid it's Jewish residents who otherwise would have went to Auschwitz. It is Europe's only complete surviving Jewish community during the Holocaust.
v1e7K TIL "Jimmy cracked corn and I don't care" is actually about a slave who started drinking his masters whisky after he was killed being bucked from a horse.
nWGwr TIL: Pluto's orbit has aligned with the constellation Capricorn since 2008. Tonight, for the last time in our lifetime, Pluto will be there. Tomorrow Pluto's orbit will begin aligning with the constellation Aquarius. Just a fun reminder that the universe is making history tomorrow.
YWEW TIL that in a 2002 Pepsi contest in Novosibirsk, Russia, someone who bought a bottle of Pepsi could win a car if they picked the right key from a set of choices. However, when a man was able to open it, Pepsi sued him since they made the contest impossible by not having the right key as a selection.
woexY TIL Scientists genetically modified goats to spin spider silk from their udders. US Professor Randy Lewis transplanted a gene into the goats from a spider that allows the goats to produce milk containing an extra protein. This is then extracted from the goat milk and spun into spider silk thread.