› added 5 years ago

85

TIL US President Dwight D. Eisenhower personally ordered the first democratically elected leader of the Congo, Patrice Lumumba, to be assassinated by poisoning his toothpaste.

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0wy6A TIL of Viola Gregg Liuzzo, the only known white woman to be murdered working for the Civil Rights movement.
JY9Lm TIL Flat Earthers spend $20k to prove earth is flat but they proved it is round by mistake
X06WR TIL Abraham Lincoln once bet a fur hat that he could pick up a barrel of whiskey off the floor and drink from it. He won the bet.
pbKe TIL there was a councilman in Texas who wanted to remove a cat from the local library. Not only he was the only councilman who voted for the motion, he lost in his bid for reelection, and the mayor declared the cat “library cat for life.”
Zpaa4 TIL: About a company that is genetically engineering poplar trees (already fast-growing, asexually spreading trees) to reduce their energy needs by adding metabolic genes from pumpkins and algae. The engineered trees grow 1.5x than controls. They've planted 600 trees in Oregon and plan to do more.