› added 10 years ago

59

TIL in 1942, 25 US marines landed on Japanese territory to survey an airfield. After being surrounded by the Japanese, they held a defensive perimeter for 9 hours before being overrun. Eventually, the only surviving marine swam through 4 miles of shark-infested waters to return to Allied lines.

Read more wikipedia.org

via reddit.com

Oob57 TIL about Owain Glyndŵr, the last native Welsh to hold the title Prince of Wales. Owain was the leader of a fierce and long-running war of independence. Despite enormous rewards being offered, he was neither captured nor betrayed, ignored royal pardons and vanished after 1412.
MxxW TIL That a man called David Reimer was raised as a girl after a botched circumcision destroyed his penis. This caused him serious psychological damage, destroying widespread theories on the malleability of gender
0wMj5 TIL that pet and feral cats kill two billion (mostly native) wildlife every single year in Australia.
X0VRR TIL William Grant Still's Symphony No. 1, Afro-American, performed in 1931 is considered the first symphony by a Black American composer to be performed by an established orchestra. It is a “blues symphony,” with blues theme in call-and-response with horns and woodwinds and ends with a spiritual
d1mZ TIL to avenge the kidnapping of a group of British subjects, the British Empire mobilised 39,000 men and 40,000 work animals, traversed 400 miles of mountainous terrain, sacked the offending king’s capital, and then returned home.