› added 4 months ago

17

TIL that Chinese forces caused a flood as a defensive scorched earth tactic, during the Sino-Japanese War. It was tactically successful, but came at a great cost to civilians.

Read more wikipedia.org

via reddit.com

XQEP TIL that the USA had 1,104 shark attacks between 1958-2014; 35 fatal. Australia only had 665 shark attacks during the same time frame, with 232 of them fatal.
78PjZ TIL that the actress who played Alice in Tom Petty's "Don't Come Around Here No More" video, Louise Foley, was cast as the original Joanie in the pilot of Happy Days.
loyWK TIL Dante, author of 'Dante's Divine Comedy', is the primary reason why the Tuscan dialect of Italian became the "standardized" Italian language. In 1945, the fascist Italian government called Dante "the greatest symbol of Italianness".
69Rb7 TIL a Dutch court ordered a 41-year-old man, who judges said had fathered between 550-600 children, to stop donating sperm. The court considered it “sufficiently plausible” that the children has or could have negative psychosocial consequences including problems around identity & fears of incest.
vPLYL TIL Richard Feynman and his wife, Gweneth Howarth, bought a Dodge Tradesman Maxivan in 1975, and had it painted with Feynman diagrams. The license plate was ‘QANTUM’.