› added 9 years ago

84

TIL of the H.L. Hunley, a fully functional naval submarine used by the Confederacy in the Civil War. Powered by hand cranks and armed with bouyant torpedos, it was the first submersible vessel in history to successfully sink an enemy ship

Read more wikipedia.org

via reddit.com

0dvrL TIL that the largest jackpot ever won on the EuroMillions was €230,000,000 by a UK player
mpgp TIL that when Fiat workers discovered that a Google’s street view car was mapping Södertälje, Sweden, they sent a Fiat to tail it for 45 minutes, and have it captured on street view in front of Volkswagen’s headquarters.
lmyN TIL In Dante’s Inferno, Dante puts people he considered his enemies in the various circles of hell, even though many of them were still alive when the epic poem was published.
PbAw TIL standard evasive procedure for a surface-to-air-missile being directed at a SR-71 Blackbird, was for the plane to simply accelerate and outfly the missile.
QorM TIL that in 20-70 million years, Mars’ moon Phobos will get close enough to the surface of the planet that it will be ripped apart by the tidal forces. The resulting debris will most likely give Mars a planetary ring.