› added 11 years ago

272

TIL that the United States’ highest scoring Ace, Dick Bong, considered his gunnery accuracy to be poor and on one occasion actually collided with his target, which he claimed as a “probable” victory.

Read more usfighter.tripod.com

via reddit.com

x6JbB TIL that Mary Edwards Walker, the only female recipient of the Medal of Honor, was a surgeon, abolitionist, prisoner of war and freethinker who challenged traditional gender roles. She was also a pioneer in a Victorian dress reform movement called "rational dress" as seen in photographs of the time
JPm4 TIL Nathaniel Bedford Forrest, the civil war general involved in the early Ku Klux Klan, had a total of 29 horses shot out from under him during the war. He himself was shot four times, and he defeated over 30 Union soldiers in hand-to-hand combat.
OE6g TIL that a brain disease that devastated communities in Papua New Guinea spread because people ate their dead family members’ brains in ritual cannibalism. People who didn’t die from the disease have a genetic mutation that blocks it.
OoMLY TIL in 1891 Chicago issued a challenge to all engineers to build a structure that would surpass The Eiffel Tower. The engineer who won proposed a giant rotating wheel that will lift visitors high above the city. The inventor of this giant wheel's name was George Ferris.
awwjL TIL there are individuals actively advocating against cochlear implant surgery. They consider the possibility of curing deafness a form of "ethnic" genocide as such an event would lead to the destruction of a unique population of people with a linguistic culture onto themselves.