› added 4 years ago

59

TIL about "Stone Frigates", islands and buildings that are legally naval ships. A notable example is the HMS Diamond Rock, which was captured after battle with 16 French and Spanish ships. The Diamond Rock inflicted over 50 casualties but the captain was still court-martialled for "losing" the ship.

Read more wikipedia.org

via reddit.com

D1evD TIL to combat the spread of smallpox during the Civil War, soldiers would find someone with cowpox, cut open their pustules, and infect themselves with it. The less harmful cowpox made them immune to smallpox, but they sometimes confused cowpox with syphilis and gave themselves an STD instead.
5VmJD TIL that during WWII, Jewish physicist Niels Bohr was smuggled out of Denmark via Sweden to work on the Manhattan project. However, he refused to go to America unless Sweden granted asylum to Denmark’s Jews. 99% of them were saved.
QYed TIL Subaru put seats in the back of their Brat compact pickup to cut the import duty from 25% to 2.5% by calling it a ‘car’
16pWW TIL that there's a museum in Japan that's dedicated to rocks that look like human faces!
DQEWv TIL Researchers in Japan developed a quick and reliable method to put your crying baby back to sleep