🎓 TIL - Today I Learned but no 🐝

TIL the first non–Native American settler in Manhattan may have been a free black man: Jan Rodrigues, a sailor marooned in 1613 by a Dutch vessel, who then married into an Indian tribe and became a negotiator between it and Dutch traders. [source, comments]

TIL that a 2015 meta-analysis of 70 studies (3.4M+ participants) found social isolation, loneliness, and living alone each raised mortality risk by 26–32%, even after controlling for depression, physical activity, and other health factors. [source, comments]

TIL about the NFS Overseas Contingent. During the Allied invasion of Normandy an unarmed unit of British firefighters were attached to the U.S 12th Army Corp tasked with preventing fires at ammo and fuel dumps. To avoid confusion they adopted US army ranks and were issued US working rig uniform. [source, comments]

TIL that in 1969, The Supremes singer Cindy Birdsong was abducted at knifepoint by an obsessed fan and managed to escape by jumping straight from his moving vehicle onto the freeway [source, comments]

TIL that out of more than 900 prehistoric stone circles in Britain, Stonehenge is the only one built entirely from non-local rocks—with stones brought from 14 to over 465 miles away to symbolize an alliance across the island. [source, comments]

TIL 77% of people preferred instant coffee over drip in a blind taste test [source, comments]

TIL that when fire ant rafts float, they form dynamic, tentacle-like arms to probe their surroundings—which once allowed an entire lab colony in a water tank to reach the outer wall and escape overnight. [source, comments]

TIL that the production, sale, and consumption of cannabis are illegal in the Netherlands. The Dutch government has in place a tolerance policy under which these prohibitions are generally not enforced. [source, comments]

TIL that Otto von Habsburg, the pretender to the Austrian throne, offered to take over the Austrian government expressly to repel the Nazis This offer was declined and after Germany annexed Austria Otto was sentenced to death by the Nazi government. [source, comments]

Today I learned the first laptop computer was created in 1981, called the Osborne 1 [source, comments]

TIL that “Crank That” by Soulja Boy was made on a cracked demo copy of music production software FL Studio (then known as Fruity Loops), with the song being written and recorded in only about ten minutes. Regardless, it topped the charts in the US and is an early example of digital sales succeeding. [source, comments]

TIL the top five selling games on the PS2 are all from either the Grand Theft Auto or Grand Turismo franchises. [source, comments]

TIL that the phrase "scot free" comes from an medieval-era word for "tax" (scot) and that to get off "scot free" originally meant to get off on taxes. [source, comments]

TIL despite being a huge driver of deforestation and water usage, the global beef industry is projected to grow 100B by 2030, bringing total market size to 712,000,000,000 USD [source, comments]

TIL that between 1924 and 1965, Grand Canyon National Park rangers killed more than 1,800 feral burros in an effort to protect the park’s landscape. Many of the burros were descendants of animals brought to the region early Spanish miners and prospectors and used as pack animals. [source, comments]

TIL that China has a whole genre of tv and film based on the fictionalized experiences of concubines in the imperial harem. It’s known as gongdou ju or “palace intrigue dramas” in English. [source, comments]

TIL that famous quip "Gentlemen, we may not make history tomorrow, but we shall certainly change the geography" belongs to General Sir Charles Harington, who oversaw planting and detonation of enormous mines during the Battle of Messines - ranked among the largest non-nuclear explosions [source, comments]

TIL the term "final girl" was coined by Carol J. Clover in her article Her Body, Himself: Gender in the Slasher Film. Clover noted that a girl is usually left to confront the killer, following a viewer shift from the killer's perspective to the final girl's perspective partway through the film. [source, comments]

TIL that Napoleon wasn't short; he was 5'7" (1.68m), which was above average for his era. The myth started because French inches were longer than British inches, making his recorded height of 5'2" seem much shorter to English speakers. [source, comments]