› added 7 years ago

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TIL that Oliver North solicited $10,000,000 from the Sultan of Brunei as a way around US rules on funding Contras in Nicaragua. The money never went to them, but to a Swiss businessman instead because North entered the wrong bank account number.

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YpmwP TIL Motorola was the first company to produce a handheld mobile phone. The first call was from Martin Cooper (Motorola) to his rival Joel Engel (Bell Labs). The phone weighed 1.1kg, had talk time of 30 minutes and took 10 hours to recharge.
A4R4 TIL that of the of the 139 members elected to the 1934 USSR Central Committee of the Communist Party at the 17th Congress, Stalin had 98 executed. Of 1,996 party members present, 1,108 were arrested, and about two thirds of those executed. Thus it was given the name “The Congress of the Condemned”.
QNJkd TIL you can get a severe allergic reaction because of physical exercise, but only if you ate wheat before. It is very rare and called wheat-dependent exercise-induced anaphylaxis (WDEIA).
ZpgQ4 TIL the longest straight border in Australia, the WA/SA-NT border, isn’t straight at all. It moves 127 metres from the 129° E parallel halfway. 40yrs after two marked obelisks were placed on other sides of the continent, it was realised one was entirely in the wrong place—but kept the border anyway.
X0OBD TIL of Madam C. J. Walker, the first self-made female millionaire in America. Born in 1867, orphaned at 7 years old and widowed at 20, she made her fortune manufacturing cosmetics and hair care products