› added 11 years ago

188

TIL “Goblet of Fire” is much longer than the first three books because JK Rowling unintentionally created a giant plot hole and had to spend the rest of the book trying to fix it

Read more accio-quote.org

via reddit.com

rRQMo TIL that when practicing for the D-Day landings in "Exercise Tiger" at least 749 Americans were killed by friendly fire and a "wolf pack" of 6 German E-boats who stumbled on the LST ships in the dark. D-Day was nearly called off because 10 officers who knew the exact plans went missing.
Br86y TIL about Gustave the Crocodile. Estimated to be over eighteen feet long, and weighing more than a ton, Gustave allegedly killed over 300 people. It has bullet scars from failed attempts on its life. It's so large that it's forced to attack larger prey. It's still on the loose, and is still growing.
W7n4 TIL in WWI, a dog named Stubby was promoted to sergeant in the US Army for locating and effectively capturing a German spy.
JYXav TIL of the Battle of Hainan Island (Chinese Civil War). The Communists conducted a successful landing operation using 2000 traditional wooden junks. This led the KMT Navy to underestimate them and tried to capture them, only for the junks to reveal artillery pieces, forcing a KMT Destroyer to flee.
yQBBM TIL about history's most expensive "hyphen" when a NASA programmer missed out a single hyphen whilst transcribing a mathematical formula for the guidance system which caused an entire NASA rocket launch to be aborted and the rocket destroyed.