› added 3 months ago

17

TIL that Henry Patch, briefly the oldest man in Europe and the last surviving soldier known to have fought in WW1, died aged 111 years, 1 month, 1 week, and 1 day

Read more wikipedia.org

via reddit.com

M7rQ0 TIL The Turbo Encabulator is a fictional electromechanical machine with a satirical technobabble description that became a famous in-joke among engineers after it was published by the British Institution of Electrical Engineers. Technical documentation has been written for the non-existent machine.
X0E7k TIL Daniel Lambert (1770- 1809), the heaviest authenticated person in history at that time, once fought a bear on the streets of Leicester and only gave up horseback hunting when his weight exceeded 560 pounds
d8Km8 TIL Oskar Dirlewanger was a Nazi officer so sadistic that other SS units avoided interacting with him. He's been accused of child molestation and necrophilia, and was beaten to death by guards while in Allied custody
16kx4 TIL the Spanish pueblo which eventually became modern-day Los Angeles was originally called El Pueblo de Nuestra Señora la Reina de los Ángeles del Río de Porciúncula
6ZoY TIL of a substance called “Libyan Desert Glass”; found in the Eastern Sahara and the deserts of Libya, this glass is of unknown origin (possibly from meteoric impacts), and has been found in ancient Egyptian Jewelry such as Tutankhamun’s Pectoral.