› added 3 months ago

9

TIL President Ulysses Grant wanted to annex Santo Domingo (or what we call the Dominican Republic). He feared a European power taking it over and hoped it'd be a safe haven for black Americans. But the annexation treaty died in the Senate and it was never pursued again.

Read more wikipedia.org

via reddit.com

0d9pA TIL - John Quincy Adam's would regularly go skinny dipping in the Potomac River.
J8ej TIL that you can tell the difference between a fossilized bone and a regular rock by licking them. Your tongue will stick to the fossil, because the tiny pores that were in the bone will suck away moisture.
r1DW TIL if you walk home from a bar, you are 8 times more likely to die than if you drove
1awGV TIL Michael Caine saw an Afrikaans foreman punch a black labourer in the face while filming Zulu (1964). He swore to never film in South Africa again while Apartheid existed; he kept his word.
QKRa TIL that if your BIOS was made by Award/Unicore after 1997, there’s a good chance that it’s set to make the PC speaker play either Beethoven’s “Für Elise” or "It’s a Small World (after all)” if the CPU fan fails.