› added 2 years ago

57

TIL During the Cold War the USA built a new embassy in Moscow. They knew it would be bugged - but overestimated their ability to remove them. The top floors had to be dismantled and rebuilt, the building finally opened in the year 2000

Read more wikipedia.org

via reddit.com

4XXQN You know, just in case
P50J TIL in 1979, two men arrived at a sheriff’s office claiming to have been abducted by aliens with lobster-claw hands. Left alone in a room with a secret recording device to expose their lie, they instead continued to talk in “terribly distressed” voices about the abduction.
wLJ58 TIL economic and social ties between NYC and the secessionist South were so strong that on January 6, 1861, the Mayor of New York, Fernando Wood called for city to secede from the Union in support of the "Confederacy of which she was the proud Empire City"
gMZJA TIL tailgating, or riding someone’s bumper, actually causes traffic jams, slowing everyone down
A40d TIL that in the 1880s, a man tried to make a living by jumping off bridges to gain fame and recognition. After he died penniless jumping off a low bridge on a drunken bet, his mother was quoted as saying: “I told him that jumping off bridges was a poor way of earning a living.”