› added 2 years ago

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TIL some old Mongolian names are deliberately 'disparaging' to fool bad spirits/diseases into believing a child has already been afflicted. e.g. Sorqaqtani, "Pox girl". Others express frustration, e.g. "Oghul-qaimish", 'next time a boy'.

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x6L47 TIL Hawaii has an endemic Hawk | The Hawaiian hawk or ʻio (Buteo solitarius) is a raptor in the genus Buteo endemic to Hawaii, Currently restricted to the Big Island. The ʻio is one of two extant birds of prey that are native to Hawaii, the other being the pueo
b9e5Q TIL during the Civil War there was a Union version of the song Dixie that started, "Away down South in the land of traitors, rattlesnakes and alligators."
jQwa TIL in 1933, three Japanese school girls crossed in love committed suicide by jumping into a volcanic crater on the island of Oshima. This act started a bizarre trend in Japan, and in the following year 800 other people leapt into the same crater.
R5Bg8 TIL that in world war 2, English soldiers would use passwords that had sounds that the language of the people they where fighting against did not have, so that they could tell if an unidentified person was an enemy soldier tying to infiltrate them by if they said these sounds correctly.
e0Ngk TIL that Founding Father John Adams would turn down invitations to July 4 celebrations, believing that July 2 (the date the Continental Congress voted for American independence) was the correct date to celebrate Independence Day.