› added 11 years ago

72

TIL that once needing 13 liters of blood for a surgery at 13, a man by the name of James Harrison vowed to donate blood once he turned 18. It was found out that his blood contained a rare antigen which cured Rhesus disease. He has donated blood about 1,000 times and saved 2,000,000 lives.

Read more wikipedia.org

via reddit.com

X0DZr TIL men produce twice as much sweat per gland than women do
D1bnj TIL While with Tubeway Army, Gary Numan’s breakout hit Are "Friends" Electric? was a No 1 single in the UK, but was all about a robot prostitute
EggMV TIL one of the most mad Roman emperors wasn't actually called 'Caligula'. It was a nickname given to him as a kid by his father's soldiers, while being on campaign with them in Germania. The name means 'little boots' in Latin and is a reference to the child-sized military gear he would wear
l79a TIL Steve Nash divorced his wife right after she gave birth because he realized the baby was not his, but his teammates.
Z81LG TIL thanks to an erroneous description of a US Customs flag in Nathaniel Hawthorne's "The Scarlet Letter", since the 1870s there's been a popular conspiracy theory that the USA has an official alternative flag, the "Civil Flag", with vertical stripes.