› added 12 years ago

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TIL that there’s an underground city beneath Beijing that covers 85 square kilometres. Built in the 70s in preparation for nuclear war it’s described as being “dark, damp, and genuinely eerie”

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r0B0 TIL that in 1975, North Korean embassy staff in Australia crashed their Mercedes, and when they went to the nearest house for help they were aghast to find that that they had knocked on the door of the South Korean ambassador’s residence.
9YAB6 TIL that a Brazilian man announced he would be burying his $500,000 Bentley so he could use it in the after life. After alot of critique about him wasting money it turned out that it was a PR stund for organ donations.
Y1wr TIL Teddy Roosevelt Jr (son of President Theodore Roosevelt) was the oldest man to invade the beaches of Normandy, the only man to invade Normandy with his son (Cpt. Quentin Roosevelt II on Omaha Beach), and he was the only general to lead his troops (on Omaha beach with only a cane and a pistol)
d8mdK TIL that hundreds of women disguised themselves as men in order to fight in the American Civil War. They were first discovered in 1863, when a Union burial detail found that the corpse of a woman wearing the uniform of a Confederate private. Estimates put the number of female soldiers at 400-750.
OobA4 TIL there was a supposed "Curse" of the subjects featured on the 50 State Quarters. One of the most famous examples was New Hampshire's "Old Man of the Mountain" which collapsed in 2003