› added 6 years ago

155

TIL of Civil War General John Sedgwick. After his soldiers began ducking for cover, Sedgwick rode into the open and declared "They couldn't hit an elephant at this distance", before being shot and killed by an enemy sharpshooter.

Read more wikipedia.org

via reddit.com

jGKQ TIL that in Portland in the 1800s there were so many trees cut down that people could use the stumps as stepping stones to keep out of the mud while they walked.
J85Q TIL a CIA handbook taught torture methods, and stressed the importance of psychological over physical torture. The threat of inflicting pain triggered fears more damaging than the pain itself, because people often underestimated their capacity to withstand pain.
dPnQ TIL a dutch man named Jan de Doot, in 1651, removed his own bladder stone with a kitchen knife. He pulled it out through an incision he made in his perineum. It was the size of an egg and weighed a quarter of a pound. He lived for years after, and had the stone plated in gold.
ZpMNB TIL that the 4th largest polished diamond in the world is in the King’s Crown and a previous crown was destroyed by Oliver Cromwell
NkdM TIL after meeting a homeless veteran in 2011, a UC Berkeley Student created an app called Feeding Forward that connects events with surplus food to those in need. One IT convention had enough leftovers to feed more than 4,279 people at eight different shelters and food banks.