› added 11 years ago

494

TIL in 1994, Howard Stern talked a caller out of jumping off the George Washington Bridge as a nation listened

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9Y7GG TIL that acacias, the trees whose leaves are eaten by giraffes, release an airborne chemical called ethylene. Ethylene alerts nearby acacia trees to produce tannin, a toxin that makes the leaves poisonous, and lethal if over-consumed. Giraffes try avoiding this by eating trees downwind from another.
OGxb4 TIL that a Japanese pilot - Nobuo Fujita bombed the US mainland during WWII (the only foreign pilot to bomb the US Mainland) and was later invited back to where he gave his family's 400-year-old katana to the city in friendship.
megx TIL John Thompson sued and won against Harry Connick Sr’s DA office after spending 18 years behind bars (14 of which he spent in solitary confinement on death row) for being wrongfully convicted of murder by Connick’s DA office due to evidence withholding
5YX5k TIL of Jacob H. Smith, an American officer who launched a notorious attack during the Filipino-American War which killed as many as 50,000 civilians. During the attack - for which he was court-martialed - Smith was heard yelling "kill everyone over the age of ten."
DdJV TIL 50 Cent made $8.7 million using Twitter to convince people to invest in a failing penny stock.