› added 3 months ago

67

TIL the biggest single prize ever captured during the Golden Age of Piracy was in 1721 by John Taylor & Olivier La Bouche. Their two pirate ships boarded the Portuguese treasure ship Nostra Senhora de Cabo which had £500K in valuables & general cargo worth £375K (a total of over $250 million today).

Read more worldhistory.org

via reddit.com

5VXQQ TIL about black swan events, major events that were rationalised in hindsight as predictable but were outside of the imaginable for people at the time of their occurrence . Examples for these are the 9/11 attacks, the start of WWI and the dissolution of the USSR.
0dpvM TIL that the white bellbird is the loudest bird in the world.
x66Lg TIL the song "Marigold", written and composed by Dave Grohl, has the distinction of being the only song released by both Nirvana and Foo Fighters.
BlVy TIL the world record for eating a 72 ounce steak was obliterated by a 120lb woman in less than 3 minutes.
v1XxK TIL The US cancelled $16.5 billion of Poland’s foreign debt as a reward for for a top secret Polish intelligence operation that extracted 6 CIA operatives from Iraq just before the Gulf War. Several countries refused to help in such a dangerous operation; only Poland agreed to help