› added 2 years ago

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TIL that despite the popular belief that SOS stands for "Save Our Ship" or "Save Our Souls", it actually doesn't stand for anything. SOS was developed because it was an easy sequence of letters to remember in Morse Code (three dots, three dashes, three dots).

4kkea TIL about Private Jesse H. Hutchins. He enlisted with the Confederate Army five days after the shelling of Fort Sumpter in April 1861. He survived the entire war only to be killed on the final day of the war at Appomattox Courthouse
RD6a TIL that Russian Jewish engineer Jakow Trachtenberg developed a system of rapid mental calculation (The Trachtenberg system) while being held in a Nazi concentration camp in order to keep his mind occupied.
mxVMp TIL Werner Herzog once promised fellow documentary maker Errol Morris that he would eat his shoe if Morris ever finished his movie on pet cemeteries, because he found Morris to be incapable of ever finishing his projects. In 1978 Morris finished his film, and Herzog publicly cooked and ate his shoe.
E7nw TIL that Fidel Castro had a serious obsession with anything dairy. He once tried to breed a super cow to no avail, brought the French Ambassador just to debate about cheese and the obsession was big enough for it to be the target for one of the many plots made by the CIA to kill him.
16nKD TIL Former U.S. Army sergeant who worked in military intelligence and carried a top secret security clearance was arrested , charged while trying to pass information to China