› added 6 years ago

247

TIL The word 'mortgage' literally means 'death pledge'

Read more businessinsider.com

via reddit.com

6EKx7 TIL about the “Great Shoe Spill of 1990,” where over 40,000 Nike shoes fell overboard out of a shipping container. Due to the shoes’ unique serial numbers, the spill has aided oceanographers in their studies of ocean currents. The shoes are still being discovered daily in distant locations!
J1jml TIL that Native Americans weren't legally considered U.S. citizens until 1924 when President Calvin Coolidge signed the Indian Citizenship Act into law. The 14th Amendment defined a citizen as anyone born in the United States, but the courts said it didn't apply to Native peoples.
grorX TIL Machiavelli hated the clergy. Bored at work at a monastery, he amused himself by asking his boss to send him fat envelops stuffed with paper and instruct messengers to run, just to mess with the priests and make them think there's something important going on that they're not privy to
GDvG TIL that at age 12, Laura Ingalls Wilder defended herself against a sexual advance with a knife, and that her editor later cut the scene from her book (p. 1, last ¼th)
78NoM TIL the developers of Among Us accidentally violated the Geneva Conventions by depicting a red cross on a medbay, which is legally protected under international law.