› added 2 weeks ago

1

TIL While traveling to the Tehran Conference in 1943 on the USS Iowa, FDR’s ship was almost torpedoed by the escorting destroyer USS William D Porter. The incident was caused when one of the destroyer’s crew members failed to remove the primer of the torpedo while doing a training exercise.

Read more militarytimes.com

via reddit.com

jNOBv TIL: An old building in Turin recently updated its look by getting a belly-button piercing. The huge ring-and-ball piercing is bleeding a little: painted-on red blood on one side, blue on the other. It's said to be a temporary art piece.
89aK TIL that diamonds are not as valuable or rare as we think: they’re only expensive because of a worldwide monopoly on diamond mines.
a4RM TIL in 1995, when looking through the manuscripts of Carl Koller at the Library of Congress, a German historian found a small envelope of cocaine with the note: “Remainder of the first dose with which I made my initial cocaine experiment in 1884”
oR4Jr TIL Chickens can spontaneously change their sex
ADbP7 TIL Iceland was extensively forested before the first humans settled there. But within 500 years of their arrival 95% of woodlands had been cut down, leading to soil erosion, crop failure and the eventual abandonment of many farms.