› added 11 years ago

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TIL a British cabinet minister was almost given the job title of “PENIS”: the Productivity, Energy and Industry Secretary

Read more telegraph.co.uk

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M5Dm TIL Spielberg suggested Ron Howard (the director of Apollo 13) to use KC-135 - an airplane that could create 23 seconds of weightlessness for filming certain scenes. Those scenes were filmed in bursts of 25 seconds after flying 612 parabolas, adding up to a total of 3hrs 54mins of weightlessness.
6E7nZ TIL 250 Union soldiers surrendered to the Confederates, enlisted in the Confederate Army while held as POWS, were recaptured by the Union Army, and then re-enlisted as Union soldiers. They were called Galvanized Yankees.
1a67 TIL - Ulysses S. Grant considered the Civil War God’s punishment for what the United States did to Mexico in the Mexican-American war
8e76V TIL that there is a religious manuscript from the 14th Century called "The Decretals of Gregory IX" featuring a figure who looks like Yoda in an orange robe. It's most likely part of a creative depiction of the story of Samson, according to the curator of the British Library.
Nv7E TIL that the story of the US army giving native Americans blankets laced with smallpox is a lie.