› added 8 years ago

137

TIL the US navy simulated a naval battle against the Iranian navy and lost… Badly.

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via reddit.com

W7kB TIL Carl Sagan recorded a message for those who would make it to Mars. “Whatever the reason you’re on Mars is, I’m glad you’re there. And I wish I was with you.”
nV1P TIL that the Yankee Doodle lyrics “Stuck a feather in his hat and called it macaroni” refer not to the pasta, but to Macaroni fashion, a British type of pompous over-dressing.
PYoNO TIL About Einstein's "Year of Miracles". In one year he published 3 papers that changed modern physics. The first about the particle theory of light (won him his Nobel Prize), the second led to people accepting the existence of atoms, and the third introduced special relativity (E=mc^2). He was 26.
OopKg TIL Doctor Who actor Patrick Troughton left his wife months after she gave birth to their third child, to live with his girlfriend - with whom he had three children. He maintained a deception of having stayed with his original family and his own mother died unaware of the truth 24 years later
6EaRl TIL: Alice Crook, a PhD student, analyzed Presbyterian records from 62,456 children born in Scotland between 1680 and 1839. She found middle names rare until about 1780 when their popularity began to rise dramatically—almost 99% of children in her sample who had middle names were born after 1780.