› added 4 weeks ago

3

TIL in WWI, half of the French army mutinied in 1917. Soldiers remained in trenches, but refused orders to attack after the failure of the Nivelle Offensive, which General Nivelle promised a 48 hour victory. The mutinies were heavily suppressed by the French and were not fully disclosed until 1967.

Read more wikipedia.org

via reddit.com

5YgE9 TIL that the US Navy has been training dolphins to carry out military tasks such as locating underwater mines and flagging enemy swimmers since the 1960's
LkZdZ TIL that JFK installed an interior swimming pool in the White House during his presidency, that stayed until it was removed by Richard Nixon in April 1970
9YBZr TIL the only avian dinosaurs to survive the asteroid mass extinction event were no larger than a duck and still had teeth.
VMR1Q TIL that Heinrich Heine, one of Germany's most famous poets, wrote- "Where they burn books, they will ultimately burn people as well.". Exactly 120 years later, Heine's writings were burned and banned by Nazi Germany, for he was a Jew.
XEKm8 TIL: For journalistic purposes, William Thomas Stead exposed child prostitution and abduction in 1885 by having a thirteen-year-old victim, Eliza Armstrong, "purchased" for £5 and taken to a brothel where she was drugged. He published this later in a series of exposés that shocked readers.