› added 9 years ago

161

TIL that Richard Nixon sabotaged Vietnam peace talks to give himself a better chance in the 1968 U.S. Presidential election, prolonging the war by 5 years.

Read more bbc.com

via reddit.com

D14Xg TIL Victor Klemperer, Jewish KZ inmate and post-war professor of German literature, wrote a book which analyses how nazis introduced a nearly Orwellian kind of German language. Examples are "crisis" for defeat, "connection" (Anschluss) for annexation, and "enhanced interrogation" for torture.
x8k TIL Gandhi believed the Jews should have committed mass suicide instead of being killed by the Nazis during the Holocaust
0DKR TIL that in 1968, the autopsy of the 39 year old Martin Luther King Jr. revealed that he had the heart of a 60 year old, likely due to the stress of leading the civil rights movement
41kJ TIL a fire hydrant in San Francisco that survived the 1906 earthquake and aided fire fighters in saving the Mission district was painted gold in memory of the event.
oRO7o TIL that Venus flytrap is named so, because it resembles female genitalia