Today I Learned…

Pirates wore eye patches not to cover a missing eye, but to help them see in the dark. It takes the average human eye about 25 minutes to adjust from bright sunlight to being able to see in total darkness. When going belowdecks, pirates would swap the patch from one eye to the other in order to see with the eye that had already adjusted to darkness. (from Ripley’s Believe It Or Not: Out of the Box)