› added 4 years ago

106

TIL in 1987, a concentration camp survivor was asked to identify an accused Nazi guard in court. He asked him to remove his glasses and approached him closely. When he made eye contact, the survivor recoiled and shouted "Grozny!" meaning "Terrible" in Polish, recognizing his "murderous eyes."

Read more wikipedia.org

via reddit.com

0XkM TIL that Mafia capo Gregory Scarpa was recruited by the FBI to find information on the murders of 3 civil rights activists by the KKK using extrajudicial methods. He attained the location of the bodies by pistol whipping a Klansman and putting a gun in his mouth.
xr45 TIL Killer bees were created in an attempt to breed tamer and more manageable bees. This was done by crossing a european honey bee and an african bee, but instead the offspring became more aggressive and highly defensive bees that had escaped into the wild
AyJl TIL of a 2005 British TV show that successfully convinced several members of the public that they were going into space as a space tourist. Even though they never left the ground and the whole show was an elaborate practical joke.
gYZ8 TIL that after his wife died because she couldn’t easily access medical attention, an Indian man spent 22 years cutting through the mountain that separated his village from the nearest medical center. The finished path shortened the necessary travel distance by 40 km. He used nothing but a chisel.
OolMX TIL a local folk remedy in Boho, Ireland was to place soil from the local church under a pillow while you slept to cure infections. In 2018 a microbiologist found the churchyard's soil contains a previously unknown strain of streptomyces which can be used to create antibiotics