Recent comments in /f/todayilearned

teabagmoustache t1_ja842b6 wrote

Reply to comment by TheRealVillain666 in TIL a year after the defeat of the Spanish Armada, the English sent their own Armada to Spain, leading to similar losses of ships and men, and an ignominious English defeat by malektewaus

Exactly how it should be.

I find it's mainly people who had a similar education to yourself, that are the hardest to reason with when it comes to British history.

Acknowledging atrocities were carried out by the Empire doesn't mean you can't be proud of positive contributions at the same time.

We should be proud of doing good in the world and learning about the not so good, means we can learn from it and not repeat it.

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0ttr t1_ja82bx0 wrote

Reply to TIL John Scopes, a high school teacher in Tennessee, was arrested and tried for merely teaching the theory of evolution in 1925. by JesusLikesHisCheezIt

https://www.thelastarchive.com/season-2/episode-1-monkey-business

You should listen to this podcast...because it adds a very important twist. While I support the teaching of evolution over biblical creation in schools, it's a very important thing to note that AT THAT TIME eugenics and evolution were very tightly entwined, and Scopes taught from a textbook that included it. William Jennings Bryan alluded to this in his defense.

Here's a quote from another link discussing this: "John Scopes admitted to having taught lessons out of George William Hunter’s textbook “A Civic Biology.” If you’ve never read this book, it might shock you. Hunter divided mankind into five races, concluding that the highest race was “the Caucasians, represented by the civilized white inhabitants of Europe and America.” In a different section of the book, he discussed what should be done to people with inferior traits:

“If such people were lower animals, we would probably kill them off to prevent them from spreading. Humanity will not allow this, but we do have the remedy of separating the sexes in asylums or other places and in various ways preventing intermarriage and the possibilities of perpetuating such a low and degenerate race.”

So you can see why religious and moral people might have objections to evolution being taught and where people interpreting the science (and some scientists themselves) had erred here... this kind of thinking, well, you know where it led. https://www.timesnews.net/news/education/the-forgotten-link-between-the-scopes-trial-and-eugenics/article_45390ee2-0448-11ed-96b9-3fd02a64a683.html

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CameronMH t1_ja828wj wrote

Reply to comment by mgvertigo101 in TIL about Vesna Vulović, the Guinness world record holder for surviving the highest fall without a parachute: 10,160 m (33,330 ft; 6.31 mi) by Cannabisseur78

But you won't die of hypoxia or hypothermia while falling as skydivers don't jump from cruising altitude, and even if you did you wouldn't be there for long enough to pass out, you cover about 10000 feet per minute at terminal velocity and cruising altitude for a plane is roughly 35000 feet

Within 60 seconds you would be at a low enough altitude to breathe just fine and 2-3 minutes later you will be on the ground

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teabagmoustache t1_ja81syd wrote

Reply to comment by PrettyText in TIL a year after the defeat of the Spanish Armada, the English sent their own Armada to Spain, leading to similar losses of ships and men, and an ignominious English defeat by malektewaus

Where did you learn your history? I must be one of a very few people who was taught a well rounded view of history, going by some of these comments.

Also people don't think we are polite and cultured, any post on here about the UK is full of people shitting on the British.

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mojoegojoe t1_ja81nwa wrote

Reply to comment by Magmagan in TIL John Scopes, a high school teacher in Tennessee, was arrested and tried for merely teaching the theory of evolution in 1925. by JesusLikesHisCheezIt

It's crazy how political structure such as this has such ramifications throughout the whole environment. He didn't even reach the class he was getting sued for-

"After the trial, he admitted to reporter William Kinsey Hutchinson "I didn't violate the law,"[8] explaining that he had skipped the evolution lesson and that his lawyers had coached his students to go on the stand;"

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