› added 7 years ago

177

TIL the first Australian ship to go to Japan was a boat full of convicts who mutinied against their masters in in 1829. After escaping to China the sailing master wrote an account of their journey, but until 2017 when an amateur historian found Japanese paintings of the ship no one believed him.

Read more wikipedia.org

via ift.tt

E5Nd TIL that mustard gas led to chemotherapy. During a World War II air raid, German pilots hit an American ship which had a secret stockpile of mustard gas. Doctors noticed that the gas suppressed cell division, which could fight cancer.
6XEZ TIL Adolf Hitler wrote admiringly of the Chinese and Japanese. “They belong to ancient civilizations, and I admit freely that their past history is superior to our own. They have the right to be proud of their past, just as we have the right to be proud [of ours].”
E7lP TIL that, in all 403 of his episodes, Bob Ross used the same 8 colors on his pallette so that his audience didn’t “have to go out and buy 1500 different kinds of colors” in order to paint along with him each week.
KvvE TIL That 167 people cashed in big on 175 to 1 odds that Luis Suarez would bite someone during the 2014 World Cup after a Norwegian betting site posted a joke bet.
QJkGX TIL that diseases brought by Europeans caused the Native American population of an estimated 100 million to decline by almost 90%