› added 5 months ago

15

TIL about the 1863 Lieber Code (General Orders No. 100), a military codified law that governed the wartime conduct of the United States Union Army, making it one of the first armies in human history that prohibited r@pe, looting, arson, etc., with the punishment often being execution.

Read more wikipedia.org

via reddit.com

0dWKj TIL that before water fountains were used for people to drink water freely in public, people used to drink from something called the "common cup", a publicly shared and very unhygienic cup or ladle-type spoon attached by string.
GY6A4 TIL the Bee Gees song "Massachusetts" was originally written for The Seekers, but when they couldn't get the song to The Seekers, the Bee Gees recorded it themselves. Their version ended up charting at #1 in 13 countries and became one of the best selling singles in history.
DQ5jg TIL penguins oil was an alternative oil product when seal oil resources were depleted on Antarctic islands
MpLB TIL Pandora (internet radio) didn’t pay its 50 employees at all for two years from 2002-2004
16xnO TIL that the popular Nazi symbol is the Hooked Cross, a christian symbol. And not the Swastika, the eastern symbol. One of the places from Hitler's childhood includes a Benedictine Monastery in Austria which had used the Crooked Cross symbol from at least 1869