› added 11 months ago

32

TIL the first submersible, the USS Turtle, was built in 1775.

Read more wikipedia.org

via reddit.com

xV4Gb TIL Naturalist Thomas Savage went to Africa and acquired the skull and bones from an unknown ape species, which he described in 1847. The ape is known today as western gorilla
4XZdJ TIL about the potlatch, a ceremony of some First Nations on the Canadian Northwest Coast held to celebrate events (ex. marriages, births). It served to confer status and redistribute wealth, which was seen as anti-Christian and wasteful of personal property, leading to a federal ban from 1884-1951.
N74NJ TIL: Of the United States' 2.9 million female high school athletes, only 3% are cheerleaders, yet cheerleading accounts for nearly 65% of all catastrophic injuries in girls' high school athletics and carries the highest rate of catastrophic injuries in sports.
eYyJ TIL Operation Mockingbird was a classified CIA program spanning from the 50’s through to late 70’s intended to influence the media and create ‘a propaganda network’ of leading American journalists.
W7118 TIL The town of Brownsville, Oregon, which served as the filming location for Stand By Me, celebrated the 30th anniversary of film's release by introducing the first "Ray Brower Memorial 5K Walk/Run," named in honor of the dead body around which the film's plot revolved.