› added 11 months ago

42

TIL that Apple Macintosh family is named after the McIntosh, which is the national apple of Canada.

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X9a8 TIL Kwanzaa was first celebrated in 1966 and is an African-American thing, not an African holiday
NX46e TIL about Rocket Boots, invented by Soviet scientist Viktor Gordeyev. Instead of actual rockets, the boots were equipped with pistons filled with a fuel-air mixture. The boots enabled an average speed of 10.5 mph and a maximum speed of 22 mph.
O4ML TIL the ‘Yin and Yang’ symbol was actually a shield design from the late Roman Army, and predates Taoist representations by almost 700 years
QeLE TIL that since 2000, the license plates of the District of Columbia (whose residents pay taxes to the federal government, but do not elect representatives or senators to congress) have featured the slogan “Taxation Without Representation”.
1aZ44 TIL in the civil war, the commander of the Union "lightning brigade" personally took out a loan to buy his soldiers advanced new repeating rifles because the government would not supply them. Using the firepower advantage afforded by the new rifles, his brigade proved extremely effective in combat.