› added 12 years ago

241

TIL The Anti-Defamation League in the US was busted for spying on US citizens (and others) in support of the South-African apartheid regime and Israel.

R5bn8 TIL that Oscar Wilde's tomb was literally destroyed by kisses. Traditionally, visitors to the tomb would kiss it after applying lipstick, which caused it to weaken over time as cleaning operations to remove the lipstick grease caused the stone to become more porous.
wo7d8 TIL "the first unambiguous evidence" of an animal other than humans making plans in one mental state for a future mental state occurred in 1997 when a chimpanzee was observed (over 50x) calmly gathering stones into caches of 3-8 each in order to later throw at zoo visitors while in an agitated state
rB8w TIL that Josip Broz Tito after surviving assassination attempts wrote to Stalin: “Stop sending people to kill me. We’ve already captured five of them, one of them with a bomb and another with a rifle … If you don’t stop sending killers, I’ll send one to Moscow, and I won’t have to send a second.”
o68 TIL A man was dismissed from the US Air Force for asking “How can I know that an order I receive to launch my missiles came from a sane president?”
nLB7 TIL that Jan Amos Comenius, a Czech protestant pastor, was first to popularize the use of pictures in textbooks using charts, diagrams, and maps in his classroom. He supported equal opportunity for poor children and opened doors to education for women. He is considered the father of modern education