› added 8 years ago

238

TIL a 17 foot statue of Vladimir Lenin has been removed from a rooftop in NYC’s East Village, where it stood for 20 years. The statue had been positioned to face Wall Street, the emblem of capitalism.

Read more atlasobscura.com

via ift.tt

Wkpoo TIL of Hannah Szenes, a Jewish parachutist dropped by the British into Yugoslavia during WWII to help rescue Hungarian Jews about to be deported to Auschwitz. Arrested, imprisoned and tortured, she refused to reveal details of her mission or her transmitter code. She was eventually executed.
bNW4 TIL that Italy didn’t have tomatoes until 1548, which is why traditional Italian food doesn’t use tomatoes
wgQE TIL: Georg Alexander Pick, mathematician who helped Einstein on general relativity, died in a concentration camp
Kp6a TIL: Special K is banned in Denmark for being fortified with “toxic” doses of nutrients
P1jEE TIL that Michael Gambon was such a private person that when asked by a reporter about his wife he replied "What wife?" He later had an affair with a woman 25 years his junior and had 2 kids with her, but bequeathed nearly his whole fortune to his legal wife while his girlfriend got nothing.