› added 8 years ago

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TIL: Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey launched his tech career by writing open source software to route delivery trucks from the Internet

V6ZB TIL of a Jewish man who escaped Germany in 1938 at age 13 and returned in 1945 as a U.S. Military Intelligence officer charged with hunting escaped Nazis and proving that Hitler was dead. In the process he tracked down a dozen SS officers and discovered Hitler’s Last Will and Testament.
rND7W TIL That homosexuality for men wasn't decriminalised in England/Wales until 1967 with sexual acts not fully on par with the legal status' of heterosexual or lesbian couples until 2001
l7B1V TIL that Victorian Era doctors would use genital stimulation or manual pelvic massage to induce hysterical paroxysm a.k.a an orgasm to treat hysteria. Eventually devices were invented that took treatment times from hours to minutes. These devices would evolve to become modern day vibrators.
ANREg TIL when Mongol fleets under Kublai Khan attacked Japan in 1274 and 1281, typhoons struck both times, causing significant damage to the fleets. Japan successfully repelled the invasions, and the Mongols never attacked again. The typhoons are called "kamikaze" and are said to have saved Japan.
4X116 TIL after conquering China, by 1241 the Mongols were expanding their empire to the west, using Chinese rockets (self-propelled flying bombs) in battles across Eastern Europe. And with them came secret of black powder - the recipe was first written down around 1250 by English scholar Roger Bacon.