› added 2 years ago

57

TIL that in 1940, after the fall of France during WW2, the British Royal Navy attacked and destroyed, neutralized or captured the largest ships in the French naval fleet in order to ensure they would not fall into German hands.

Read more wikipedia.org

via reddit.com

Y7yxA TIL that 6174 is called the Kaprekar Constant after Indian Mathematician D.R. Kaprekar. No matter which four digit number you start with (as long as it is not identical), you will always end up at 6174 in a maximum of seven iterations.
9wN6m TIL that the species Lycosa aragogi is named after the spider Aragog from the Harry Potter book "The Chamber of Secrets"
OoZrY TIL Brazil could not afford to send its athletes to Los Angeles for the 1932 Summer Olympics. So they sent coffee bags with them which the athletes had to sell along the way to fund their own travel.
Bg0ND TIL in 1862 John Langdon Down was the first to describe a distinct mental disability, calling it "Mongoloidism" due to patients' thin eye shape and shorter stature. Now known as Down Syndrome, was discovered in the 1950s to be caused by the presence a third copy of chromosome 21.
VQGk TIL that when Wayne Gretzky retired in 1999, he held 61 NHL records. He currently holds 60.